


We Can Be Heroes (Just For One Day)

by PrairieChzHead (msannomalley)



Series: Lost Causes [7]
Category: The Trixie Belden Mysteries - Julie Campbell Tatham & Kathryn Kenny
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Drug Addiction, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Referenced Suicide Attempt, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-08 02:29:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12854805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msannomalley/pseuds/PrairieChzHead
Summary: Love faces many obstacles. Dan Mangan and Michelle O'Brien's love affair is no exception. Dan and Michelle want to move forward in their lives and move forward together. However, their respective pasts want to come along for the ride. Will this newfound love affair survive?





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is an old story with a new name. It was originally posted online with the title "We Are All Made of Stars". However, I wasn't happy with it when I finished it, so I took it down and started to rewrite it. 
> 
> It is unfinished. I do not know if I will ever finish it. I decided to post it anyway for posterity's sake. No promises on finishing it, but never say never.

 

**Tuesday, December 25, 1973**  
**Somewhere on interstate 80**  
**Between Kimball, Nebraska and Cheyenne, Wyoming**

 

The wood paneled station wagon drove steadily on the Interstate headed first south, then west. The occupants were a family. The parents were seated in the front and two small children were seated in the back. The children were staring out at the frosty white landscape that whizzed by them. The adults were silent until the woman spoke up.

"Your sister's back," she informed him. "I saw her this morning when I went to drop some things off at the cabin."

"She was at the cabin?" he asked her, anger in his voice. He remembered who lived there and he remembered warning the cabin's occupant about his wayward sister and to stay away from her if she ever showed up. Apparently the warning went unheeded. "God dammit," he swore.

"Dick," the woman warned. "Little pitchers have big ears." She motioned towards the two children in the backseat. "You shouldn't be surprised," she continued. "Every time she comes back, she goes there. I don't think she knew that Dan was living there."

"Well she does now," he muttered. "When did she get in?"

"Last night," the woman replied. "Michelle answered the door when I went over there this morning."

Dick abruptly changed lanes to pass a slow moving tractor trailer. "Damn slow fucking semis," he muttered. His wife gave him another reproachful look. Dick ignored it. "So what did she smell like this time, Mary? Dope or booze?"

"Neither," Mary said. "She was stone cold sober. Rather tired looking, but sober. Maybe she's finally going to settle down."

"Her? Settle down?" Dick snorted. "That'll be the day. Who would want her anyway? She's already ruined herself. No guy wants to marry used goods."

"Dick," Mary scolded. "She's your sister, for God's sake! You shouldn't talk about her like that! She's the only family you have!"

"No," Dick corrected her. "I have you and the kids. She's just been a pain in my ass for the last twenty some odd years. That girl will never amount to anything. She had her chances to make something of herself and she blew it. Every time, she blew it." Dick swerved back into the right hand lane. "Damn it," he swore again.

"If it makes you feel any better," Mary said. "I gave her the key to the house instead of giving it to Dan, so she can stay there."

"Like she's going to sleep in the house," Dick snorted again. "The little whore just can't pass up the opportunity to get into some guy's pants." He sighed. "I just hope that Dan has the good sense to say no to her."

"Dick," Mary snapped, something uncharacteristic for her. "I will not have you talking like that in front of the children." Dick glanced sideways at his wife, seeing the anger crackling in her hazel eyes. He said nothing. "Now," Mary said. "We're going to Mother's house and we're going to enjoy our holiday. Maybe by the time we get back home, she'll be gone. You never know with her."

"I can only hope," Dick replied.

* * *

 

 

**O'Brien's Irish Acres**  
**The Main House**  
**That Afternoon**

The two lovers were lying in each other's arms in the twin bed in her childhood bedroom. Everyone else expected her to stay in that room, but she had no plans to do that. Her intent was to stay with him in the cabin, and to hell with what everyone else thought of that.

 They were caught up in a pleasant, drowsy state, simply content to be close to one another. Conversation was minimal, as the two of them often had moments where nothing needed to be said. They were content to bask in the afterglow, to let the pleasant, drowsy feeling envelope them, and to know that this feeling came from loving one another and feeling loved.

Last night, he had gotten some bad news from back home concerning a friend of his. And he felt so lost and so alone. She told him that she wasn't coming back for the holidays, but last night, she was there at his door, just when he needed her the most. He was convinced that Divine Intervention had something to do with that. He would always be convinced of this, that some higher power, some unseen force sent her to him, like an angel. She was his angel. She was his auburn-haired angel whose halo was on a bit crooked.

 Occasionally, their eyes would meet. She would look up at him, they would smile at each other, their lips would meet in a slow, sweet, loving kiss, and then they'd say in soft voices those words they were only able to say starting this very day. Even though the feeling was there, a feeling that both of them tried to deny to themselves, he could not say those words because something inside him would not let him say it. She could not say them because she was afraid to say them. But they were able to say them today. They were three simple words, but they were powerful words. I love you.

He was feeling happy today, a stark contrast to last night. He felt happy because he knew that she felt the same way about him as he felt about her. He was happy because she was here and when she was with him, he was able to forget about the bad things for awhile. When those bad things could not be ignored, she was able to chase them away by the simple act of listening to him when he needed to talk. Sometimes when she told him that it was going to be all right, he nearly believed those words for once.

As of today, she realized, love did exist. It existed because she found it and she found it with him. She had believed that love didn't exist because it seemed that no one truly loved her. But now she felt loved and she took the love he offered her and wrapped it around herself like a mantle, reveling in its warmth and its protection. He loved her for who she was and what she was. She loved him for who he was and what he was and she loved him because she was able to be her true self around him.

However, she had something on her mind, something she knew she had to tell him. She wasn’t sure, though, that if this was the right time to tell him. He had to know, and she thought that he had a right to know, but she didn't want to spoil the moment at hand.

The light and the shadows coming from the December sunshine moved slowly across the room. He wondered if maybe they should head back for the cabin before the sun set for the day, but he found himself unwilling at the moment to leave her warmth and the warmth of that bed. Even so, he asked anyway. "You think we should go back?" he asked her softly. He ran his hand slowly up and down her arm, caressing her warm, soft skin.

"I don't know," she replied. "Do you want to go back?"

"Not really," he murmured. "Do you want to go back?"

"Not really," she replied softly. Then she smiled at him in a lazy way. "It's too nice here."

"Yeah," he agreed. "It's too nice." Then he brought his mouth down to hers, kissing her softly at first, then deepening the kiss when she responded to him. When they parted, he looked deep into her blue eyes and said, "I love you, Michelle O'Brien."

Michelle felt that warmth wash over her again and she smiled at him. Then she looked deep into his dark eyes, feeling herself getting lost in their depths. She said to him, "I love you, Dan Mangan." Dan smiled at her, but then the smile turned into a devilish grin. "How much?" he asked her.

"Lots," she replied.

"How much is 'lots'?" Dan asked her with that same devilish grin.

"Higher than I can count," Michelle replied.

Dan pretended to think about what Michelle had said. "I don't know how high you can count," he said. He tightened his arms around her and he rolled over onto his back, bringing Michelle with him so she ended up lying half on top of him. Their faces were mere inches apart. "Why don't you show me instead?" he said.

Michelle saw the devilish grin on Dan's face and she saw the look in his eye and she felt his erection bumping her thigh. "Show you?" she asked. Then a smile, a saucy smile crept across her face. "I can do that," she said. And she did. And it was good. No, it was better and it was made better by the fact that they loved each other. And because they loved each other, nothing else mattered. Not the past, not other people, not their demons, nothing. What mattered was the here and now.

* * *

 

**Early evening, December 25**

Pete Anderson hated working holidays. He'd been working for Dick O'Brien for about five years and Pete believed that afforded him some sort of seniority as far as holidays went. Pete was not happy that he had to work Christmas Day. What made it worse, as far as he was concerned, was that the new guy not only got Christmas off, but the boss gave him the entire week of Thanksgiving off.

Pete finished his last task of the day, the feeding and watering. He was on his way to find Jack to let the foreman know that Pete was finished for the day and was going to head home. He found Jack Morrison outside the stable, closing it up for the night. "I'm finished," Pete said. "I'm going to head home."

Jack looked at Pete narrowly. "I'm not going to go in there and find out you did a half-assed job of it, am I?" he asked.

Pete bristled inwardly, but let no outward expression of his annoyance show through. "No," he said. "I didn't do a half-assed job."

"Let's hope not," Jack said. "Or you'll be working on New Year's, too." Jack started walking towards the office. The office Jack worked from was in one corner of the massive barn. Jack Morrison was in charge of the animal end of the business at the ranch. Pete followed Jack towards the office.

The barns and the stables lay between the main house and a small cabin. Pete looked at the cabin and he thought that it was unfair that the new guy got room and board and Pete didn't. Pete should have that cabin, not that new guy. They were halfway to the office when both of them heard voices. One voice was deep. Pete recognized that voice as belonging to that new guy the boss seemed so fond of. The other voice was distinctly feminine. Pete knew that voice, too, although it had been a couple of years since he'd heard that particular voice. "Guess who's back?" Pete said to Jack. "And balling the help again."

"What?" Jack said in a tone of voice that Pete might have been smoking something that wasn't Marlboro's. The two figures came into view.

Pete pointed at them. "Over there." The two men watched the other two as they were walking from the house and towards the cabin. At one point, the man and the woman stopped walking to kiss each other. "She's back," Pete said. "And it looks like she hasn't changed her ways one bit, either."

Jack said nothing. The boss's sister was back in town and she apparently set her sights on the new guy. For one moment, Jack felt sorry for Dan and thought that maybe he should take Dan aside and have a talk with him about what happens when you get involved with Shelly O'Brien. Everyone knew what happened with that. Shelly O'Brien would set her sights on some guy, sleep with him until she grew bored with him, and then move on to someone else. But the apple didn't fall far from the tree. Jack's boss did the same sort of thing.

"Should we tell him?" Pete asked.

"No," Jack replied. "Dan will find out soon enough. I doubt he'd listen, anyway." Dan Mangan was a good worker, but he mostly kept to himself and didn't associate much with other people. He took direction at work well enough, but Jack had the impression that if someone told Dan about Shelly, Dan probably wouldn't listen. Dan would have to find out the hard way. Jack hoped that Dan wouldn't start showing up to work high or calling in a lot.

* * *

 

**Wednesday, December 26, 1973**   
**Around two in the morning**   
**The cabin**

_He was back in Sleepyside. He found himself in front of the clubhouse door. He didn't know why he was here or why he felt he had to go inside the old building, but he was powerless to stop himself from twisting the knob and opening the door._

_The old clubhouse was dusty and it was dark. Dust caked the table and the shelves. Dust and fly specks coated the windows. Dead insects lay in the windowsill._

_Dan heard a squeak. He turned towards the direction of the noise and found himself looking at a shaft of light that came through the window. The squeak continued in some sort of rhythmic fashion until a figure could be seen in the light. The figure was seated and the squeak came from one of the wheels on the wheelchair. It was Mart._

_Mart said nothing, but he held something in his hand. Dan saw a brown bottle that came from Sleepyside's pharmacy. It was a prescription of some sorts. Dan couldn't read the writing on the bottle to tell what kind of pills were in there._

_"Sleeping pills," Mart said. "I can't sleep at night, so Doc Ferris makes me take these." Then Mart twisted the cap off the bottle and shook a bunch of little white pills into his hand. "I'm going to sleep now," he informed Dan. "I'm going to go to sleep for good and never wake up."_

_"Why?" Dan asked._

_"I'm tired of being tired," Mart replied calmly. Then he laughed. The laugh was short. Mart started putting white pills into his mouth and dry-swallowing them. He did this slowly and methodically. One by one, white pills went into Mart's mouth. Dan felt that he should stop Mart from doing this. His conscience told him that he could stop Mart from doing this, but Dan was powerless to move. Dan grew frantic at his inability to move. Soon, there was only one pill left in Mart's hand. "I don't blame you for all of this," Mart said._

_"You don't?" Dan said. He felt relieved. Mart didn't blame him one bit._

_"No," Mart said. "I blame Di, too. I blame both of you for this, you know. When I needed you guys, you both bailed on me. I don't know which is worse, my best friend abandoning me or my girlfriend dumping me for being a goddamn cripple."_

_Dan wanted to say he was sorry. He wanted to say he was sorry and that it was his entire fault that Mart was in that wheelchair in the first place. He wanted to tell Mart not to do this. But the words wouldn't come out._

_"I have no idea where Di is," Mart said. "So that means that since she's not actually here to share the blame for this, you're just going to have to take all the blame yourself, Dan." Mart brought the pill up to his mouth. He paused to say one final thought. "I'm sure glad I'm not in your shoes, Dan. I wouldn't want to live with someone else's death over my head. The day I lost my legs, I died, Dan. You killed me. Have a nice life. At least you get to have one." With that, Mart swallowed the last pill. He closed his eyes._

_Dan watched as Mart's breathing became labored. Dan didn't want to watch, but he couldn't tear his eyes away from the sight. It seemed to take forever before Mart was finally, quietly, and eerily still. Dan wanted to leave, but he was rooted in his spot. He didn't want to look at Mart's body in that chair, but he couldn't turn his eyes away. Something wouldn't let him do that. He was forced to look at his now dead best friend while a voice that only Dan could hear taunted him with the words, "You did this to him."_

_The clubhouse door burst open and Dan found himself staring into four sets of angry eyes. The angriest belonged to Trixie Belden. "You killed my brother," she accused him. "You lousy bastard. You killed my brother." Dan wanted to defend himself, but he could not speak. That…thing…or whatever it was that kept Dan from moving or speaking had control over him again._

_"What do you expect?" Jim Frayne replied. "He was never one of us anyway."_

_"We only let you in the club because we felt sorry for you," Honey Wheeler added. "We didn't actually want you around us. Taking you in just made us look good."_

_Dan couldn't believe what he was hearing. He wanted to say something, anything, but again, he couldn't do it._

_"You're out of the club," Jim said. "Not that you were around much anyway. Now take your sorry ass out of here before I kick it."_

_Dan willed himself to move, but he couldn't. He still couldn't believe what he was hearing. What happened to friendship? Bob-Whites were supposed to look out for each other._

_"You didn't look out for Mart when he lost his legs," that voice only Dan could hear reminded him. "That's not the Bob-White way."_

_"Come on, Dan," Brian said. "You heard Jim. He said move it. Now get out of here. What Jim says goes."_

_Suddenly, Dan found his voice. Unfortunately, his voice picked the wrong thing to say at the moment. "Gee," Dan said sarcastically. "I wouldn't want to anger the Almighty Jim. No, I wouldn't want to piss off the perfect, almighty James Winthrop Frayne, now would I? The perfect, almighty Jim Frayne who always gets what he wants in life. Jim Frayne, the fucking draft dodger."_

_Jim's face turned red. "I didn't dodge the draft," he shouted._

_"No," Dan said. "But your rich daddy pulled some strings for you to get into the Guard. It's the same damned thing." Dan looked at Jim with contempt. "Fucking coward."_

_Jim looked squarely at Dan. "Baby killer," Jim said._

_That did it. Dan had heard enough of that word since he came home from the war. He felt the anger, the white-hot heat of rage fill him. Dan took a swing at Jim and punched him squarely in the jaw. Jim held his jaw as the other three Bob-Whites huddled around him in concern. Dan stood in his spot, watching the group and shaking from his rage. Then four eyes turned in Dan's direction, staring at him with outright hatred. Jim stood up. He balled his hand into a fist and before Dan knew it, he was on the receiving end of a right hook to his jaw. He cried out right before everything went black._

Dan bolted upright in bed, taking most of the blankets with him. The room was dark and it was quiet except for the ticking of the alarm clock and the wheeze of the furnace. Dan blinked a few times and then he heard the blankets rustling. Dan rubbed his eyes.

"Are you all right?" Michelle asked him, laying a hand on his shoulder.

Dan turned to her, relieved that he was here and not back in Sleepyside. He didn't say anything. He wasn't all right. He had one of those nightmares he feared having last night.

"It was about Mart, wasn't it?" Michelle asked him.

"Yeah," Dan replied quietly. Michelle slid her arms around him and pulled him close to her. They both lay back down and she held him. "It's not your fault," she whispered to him.

Dan said nothing again. The dream still had a hold on him. It wasn't just the part where Mart killed himself in front of Dan, the other part bothered him, too. His friends had turned against him as well. They said they never wanted him around in the first place. At times, at least since he came home from the war, Dan wondered if maybe that was true, that they only took him into the Bob-Whites because they felt sorry for him. Little Orphan Danny with the juvenile record and no friends in town. Maybe he was right, maybe there was something to that part of his nightmare. Sometimes, in the past, Dan did feel left out, but it never bothered him enough to voice it. When the others stayed home, they did include him in whatever it was they were doing. It wasn't until after his time in the war that these feelings became stronger.

It didn't matter now. It didn't matter now because Dan had someone in his life who did want him around. Michelle was rearranging her life to be with him. Michelle was the only one who seemed to give a damn about him, who understood things that the others couldn't, and who didn't seem to be afraid of dealing with him and his nightmares. It didn't matter now. Dan decided that he didn't need the others. Michelle was all that he needed right now. But the dream still had a hold over him. Dan wanted to forget that dream. He wanted to forget that dream ever happened. There was only one way to forget, only one person who could chase away the bad dream, one person who could make him feel alive again. That's all he wanted right now. Dan Mangan wanted to feel alive again.


	2. Chapter 1

**Wednesday, December 26, 1973**  
**Harrisburg, Nebraska**

Dan didn't mean to wake up Michelle at five thirty in the morning. He tried to be quiet, hastily shutting off the alarm when it went off, slipping quietly out of bed, although he was loathe to leave that warm bed, and closing the bedroom door so the sound of running water and the whine of the old water pipes were diminished.

It was when he returned to the bedroom to get dressed and he flipped on the overhead light that Michelle woke up. Dan felt contrite when he saw her shield her eyes from the harsh glare.

"Sorry," he apologized to her.

"We need to get some lamps," she mumbled sleepily as she shifted around the bed until she sat up. Michelle covered herself with the blanket, then shifted around again to get out of bed. When she put her bare feet on the cold wooden floor, she let out a yelp and snatched them back up under the covers.

Dan laughed. He couldn't help it. Michelle didn't think it was funny. "It's fucking cold in here," she groused.

"Oh, but there's an energy crisis going on," Dan replied lightly. "Have to conserve you know. It's a mandate from the government."

Michelle was now leaning half way out of the bed, groping around the floor in search of a pair of socks. "If Tricky Dick had to put his feet on this floor, he'd say, 'To hell with conservation. Turn up the damned furnace'," she replied tartly. Michelle found a pair of socks and put them on her feet. Then she started searching for something else to cover her, something that would afford her a little warmth. She had no idea where her bathrobe was, or if she even had one. Her sweater from yesterday wasn't long enough. She didn't want to get dressed, then later get undressed, take a shower, and get dressed all over again.

"You're a merry little ray of sunshine this morning," Dan remarked.

"I'm not a morning person," Michelle replied as she continued to search for something to cover herself. "I haven't had coffee yet." Then she muttered, more to herself than to Dan, "Guess I'll have to wear the sweater after all." She picked up a green sweater from where she left it on the floor last night.

Dan stepped over to a chair that sat in the corner. One of his flannel shirts was draped over the back. He picked up the garment, and then said to Michelle, "Here." Then he tossed the shirt over to her. He walked over to the doorway and casually leaned against the doorjamb.

Michelle caught the brown flannel shirt. She let the covers fall away from her. As the cold air hit her bare skin, she hurriedly thrust her arms into the sleeves that were too long for her. As she closed the shirt in front of her, she happened to look over at Dan, and she did not miss the leer he gave her.

"You're terrible, you know that?" she said. She started buttoning the shirt up.

"Me?" Dan asked innocently.

"Yeah, you," Michelle replied. "Leering at me like you're some dirty old man."

"Dirty old man?" Dan replied. At first, he thought Michelle really was upset with him, but then he caught the mischievous look in her eye. He gave her that devilish smile she was really starting to love. "Can't help it," he said. "You've got nice boobs."

Michelle made a face at him and then threw her sweater at him and then slid out of bed. Dan caught it and tossed it aside. As Michelle walked towards the door, Dan added, "And nice legs."

Michelle snorted and walked past Dan into the main room. Dan followed her. He leaned against the kitchen counter as Michelle found the coffee pot and began preparing some coffee. When the coffeepot was on the stove, she went into the refrigerator in search of some food. Dan flipped on the radio then watched Michelle moving around the kitchen. He noticed her sleep-tousled hair and he noticed the fact that his brown flannel shirt barely covered her backside. Dan started toying with the idea of going into work a little later. Then he considered calling in sick. He let his mind wander a bit, thinking about spending the entire day in bed, and not recuperating from some flu bug, either.

Michelle closed the refrigerator door, looking defeated. Then she went to the cupboard and found a square Tupperware container. She placed it on the counter and then said, "Here's breakfast."

"Huh?"

Michelle smiled to herself a little bit, realizing that she had startled Dan out of some daydream. She'd seen the look on his face again.  _Your boyfriend likes it when you wear his shirts and nothing else. Remember that, Michelle._

"This is all I could find to eat," she said. Michelle opened the container.

"Cookies?" Dan asked as he saw the contents of the container. The container held an assortment of sugar cookies, all cut out into various Christmas shapes, all covered in white icing and an assortment of colored sugars and candy sprinkles.

"We ate all the leftovers last night," Michelle pointed out. "So it's either this or the fuzzy, green lump of something that's in the refrigerator."

"There's nothing else?" Dan asked.

"Nope," Michelle shook her head. One of them was going to have to make a run to the store to get something. And it would probably fall to her to run to the store to get food, since Dan had to go into work.

Dan looked at the container of cookies, contemplating eating one of those for breakfast or going hungry. A man was on the radio, droning out the morning ag report. Dan reached into the container, pulled out a cookie shaped like Santa Claus, and took a bite. When the cookie crunched in his mouth, he made a face.

"What's the matter?" Michelle asked, taking a Christmas wreath cookie for herself.

"They're hard," Dan replied. He set the cookie down on the counter.

"They're supposed to be hard," Michelle replied. "They're cookies."

"But I don't like hard cookies," Dan replied.

"My, you're picky, aren't you?" Michelle replied. The coffee was ready and as she pulled some cups out of the cupboard and poured the hot liquid into each cup, she said, "Well, dunk it in this."

Dan looked unsure about eating soggy cookies for breakfast. It was either that or starve. He decided to eat the soggy cookie. But first, he pulled his wallet from his back pocket and he opened it and checked the contents. "You got any money?" he asked Michelle.

"Three dollars," Michelle replied.

Dan pulled some bills from his wallet. "I've got sixty bucks," he said. "If you want to run out and get something."

Michelle had this little voice in her head, a voice she sometimes scathingly called her Internal Fucking Critic. It was that voice that told her last fall, after she got out of rehab that she should not see Dan because she wasn't good enough for him. Right now, that Internal Fucking Critic was saying,  _And who does he think he is? You move in and he suddenly thinks you're the 'little woman'? Give me a break._

If Dan was going in at six and he worked until six or seven, as Michelle remembered from last summer, it was going to be a very long day. Alone. In this cabin. With nothing to do. And nobody else to talk to. It would be boring and being bored was a dangerous thing right now. Michelle remembered the three bottles of beer she also saw in the refrigerator. Then she remembered that she hadn't yet told Dan about her two stints in rehab.  _What are you so afraid of,_ her conscience asked.

 _He didn't say that I had to go out and get groceries,_ Michelle pointed out to that internal voice.  _He said 'If you want to'. It'll beat the hell out of staring at the walls all day._

Michelle took the money. "I'll see what I can do," she said. Michelle didn't want to eat sugar cookies for lunch and dinner, either. "What time are you going to be home?" she asked.

Dan normally put in twelve hour days. Not because he had to, but because work kept his mind off of other things. Working twelve hours a day left less time for him to sit alone and wrestle with those demons. Then he remembered that he wasn't alone anymore. When he walked in the door later today, Michelle would be there. "Four or five," Dan replied.

"Cutting out early?" Michelle wondered, then took a sip of coffee.

"No," Dan replied. "I don't have to work that late anymore. I might come back for lunch."

"Okay," Michelle said. She decided to run out for food later this morning.

Dan drained the last of his coffee and set the cup in the sink. Then he walked to the door and took his coat from the hook, thrusting his arms into the sleeves. Michelle watched him.

KSBF news time is five-fifty five. Weather for today, sunny and bitter cold. Today's high will only reach into the single digits. Tonight's low, a chilly minus fifteen. Tomorrow, more of the same, highs in the single digits. Currently it's ten below zero in Scottsbluff, minus twelve in Gering, and Harrisburg reports a temperature of fifteen below zero.

Michelle crossed her arms in front of her chest. The air was chillier by the door and she was trying to keep warm. Dan had the coat zipper in his hand, but paused, noticing Michelle standing near the door wearing his brown flannel shirt and nothing else. Dan thought about going in later again. He knew how to keep her warm.

Responsibility won out, however. Before he zipped up his coat, Dan pulled Michelle closer to him for a kiss. Michelle slid her arms around his neck in a way that Dan was starting to love. Her arms would come up slowly on each side, then they'd meet briefly, until Michelle's left hand rested at the base of his skull, almost cradling his head in the palm of her hand. Her right arm hooked around his neck. In response, he brought his lips to hers and his arms went around her, almost in the same way. His right hand rested on the small of her back, while his left hand cradled her head, his long fingers becoming entangled in her hair. As their lips met and met again in their good-bye, Dan let his right hand casually drift lower until it went past the hem of the shirt. He let that hand slide underneath the flannel. He felt the warmth of her skin as he let that hand follow the curve of her bottom.

"Little early to be copping a feel," Michelle remarked with somewhat of a smirk.

"Can't help it," Dan replied. "You're a fox."

Michelle wrinkled her nose at him in a way that Dan thought was kind of cute. He kissed her one more time, before he said reluctantly, "I suppose I should get going." Also reluctantly, he broke the embrace and then zipped up his coat. He pulled his gloves out of his pocket, put them on, and then placed a hand on the doorknob. He started to twist it, but stopped, and then turned around. He pulled Michelle into another kiss. "I love you," he said softly when the kiss broke.

"I love you, too," Michelle replied with a smile.

That day, Dan's job was to work on repairing some of the horse stalls. Old, weathered boards were to be replaced with new ones. The smell of horse, new lumber, and straw mingled in the air and it was not unpleasant. The stable was heated and Dan's coat hung from the corner of an empty stall gate.

Dan hadn't ridden much lately. Occasionally on a Sunday, he'd take one of the horses out and roam around the two thousand acres that made up the O'Brien spread. Lately, though, he hadn't gone out because it was too cold. And now Michelle was back. Dan wondered if maybe, after it warmed up a bit, Michelle might want to go for a ride sometime. He wondered if she even knew how to ride a horse. Michelle didn't strike him as a horsey type person. He thought it might be fun to teach her how to ride.

Dan became aware of another presence in the room. Pete Anderson, his co-worker, came by to drop off more lumber. Pete brought the boards in and let them fall to the floor with a loud crack. The noise made Dan jump out of his skin. It sounded like something else he'd heard more than his fair share of times, when he was on the other side of the world and wearing an Army uniform.

"What's the matter, Mangan?" Pete asked in a jeering way. "Did I scare you?"

Dan looked up briefly and saw the smirk on Pete's face. Dan wanted to punch the smirk from the other man's face. Dan decided to ignore Pete.

Dan Mangan and Pete Anderson did not get along. Dan tried to avoid the other man, more for Pete's own good than his own. From the day Dan arrived on the ranch, Pete let it be known that he thought Dan was inferior as a human being because Dan hadn't been born and raised in Harrisburg, Nebraska. Pete might have let it slide if Dan were a Midwesterner by birth, but this new guy was from New York. Pete always seemed to bring up where Dan was from into every conversation. And to make it worse, Pete always pronounced it, "Noo Yawk", which really got on Dan's nerves. Dan had somewhat of an East Coast, New York dialect, which he'd never noticed much until he came here. He could hear it whenever he spoke.

Dan hoped that Pete would just turn around and leave. Dan had no such luck. Pete lingered in the stable, watching Dan work.

"I hear that Shelly's back in town," Pete said. "In fact, I saw her the other day."

 _Shelly who?_ Dan wondered. Then he realized that Pete was talking about Michelle. Dan again decided to ignore Pete.

"Saw the both of you coming out of the house and going to the cabin yesterday," Pete added.

"So?" Dan said.

"If you think balling Shelly O'Brien's going to give you an 'in' with the boss, think again," Pete informed Dan. Pete was a little put off by the fact that Dan seemed to the Golden Boy of the place as far as Dick O'Brien was concerned. Some long-haired city boy from back East was in good with the boss. It just wasn't right.

"Who said I wanted an 'in' with the boss?" Dan asked sarcastically. "Or is everything about ass kissing to you?"

Pete didn't like that reply. It hit a little too close to home for him. Even though Pete didn't see it that way, everyone else knew that he was a big time brownnoser. "Well," he retorted. "Shelly's not that special anyway. She'll fuck anything with a dick. So don't think you should be honored by seeing her," Pete said. "She'll get bored with you and find someone else. Unless you catch something from her first."

Dan had heard a variation of this same tune before, only the last time it came from Dick, Michelle's brother. Dan was tired of it. He knew that Michelle hadn't always been discriminating in the company she kept or in some of the things she did in the past, but that was it. It was in the past. People change. People are capable of change. Dan himself changed and he did it because he was given a second chance.

The other thing about this was that Dan didn't know Michelle then. He didn't know what she was like, nor did he witness the things she did. He only knew her now. When he took the Michelle he knew and compared her to this other Michelle of the past, he had a lot of difficulty reconciling the two of them. Dan was willing to give Michelle her second chance in life, to be there for her and to bend over backwards to help her along. But he was starting to think that maybe there was something to what Michelle had said about this small town and the people who lived here.

"Thanks for your concern," Dan replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "But I can take care of myself." Then he looked Pete in the eye. "And it's really none of your damn business who I spend my time with anyway."

"Suit yourself," Pete shrugged. "When you get the clap," he added in a false friendly voice. "Don't come crying to me about it." With that, Pete walked off.

That exchange put Dan in a foul mood for the rest of the day. He couldn't understand why some people refused to see that Michelle was not a bad person. She was a good person who did some bad things. She knew they were bad, and Dan knew that Michelle had a lot of regrets about these things she'd done. If she were truly a bad person, she wouldn't have a single regret about anything.

Dan realized that he and Michelle were alike in that respect. At one point in his own life, he did some pretty bad things himself. Everyone else was wrong about Michelle and if they wouldn't see that, then he'd make them see it.

Around nine in the morning, Michelle took her little Volkswagen up to Scottsbluff to buy groceries. Harrisburg only had a small grocery store with three aisles in it. Simpson's General Store. Michelle didn't feel like going into Harrisburg. She wasn't ready to face those other people yet.

The drive was quiet. When Michelle got to the Super-Valu in Scottsbluff, she felt weird when she grabbed a grocery cart, stuck her purse in the child seat, and started wheeling the cart through the store. Michelle walked past the aisles of merchandise when a thought occurred to her. She never made out a list and she had absolutely no idea what to buy.

Michelle wasn't much of a cook. She could heat things up or make things out of a box that didn't require much effort. In LA, she ate out a lot or called out for pizza or Chinese. If she was too hungover to go out and she was broke, she could make macaroni and cheese if she had to. At one point during her adolescence, Mary tried to teach Michelle how to cook, but those lessons were a miserable failure. Michelle wasn't interested in learning anything domestic. Michelle had bigger plans for her life and being a housewife wasn't one of them.

 _Isn't that what you are now?_  Her Internal Fucking Critic was speaking again.  _You left all that notoriety and those good wild times to keep house for some guy who will probably never make it legal and you know it._

 _Shut up,_ Michelle thought.  _We're not married and we have to eat you know. Harrisburg isn't the mecca of takeout like LA is. And who says I even want to make it legal, anyway?_

Michelle wandered up and down the aisles for awhile, vainly trying to remember something, anything, she might have made the last time she had Home Ec in school. Michelle only took Home Ec in seventh and eighth grade because the only electives offered to seventh and eighth grade girls was Home Ec or chorus. Home Ec was the lesser of the two evils to her at the time. Try as she might, Michelle couldn't remember anything except cutting a hole in a slice of bread and frying an egg in it. And that didn't appeal to her at all. She didn't think it would appeal to Dan much, either.

Michelle found herself in the frozen foods section. She ended up throwing a bunch of TV dinners into the cart. That was something easy to make. So was macaroni and cheese. She wandered over to the boxed foods aisle and found some of that. Then she found a few boxes of Hamburger Helper. She supposed she could try that. How hard could it be to fry up hamburger? Then she went over to the meat section to get some hamburger. She bought a couple pounds of it, and then something else caught her eye.

It was a roast. It was a smallish beef roast and seeing that made Michelle try and remember the last time she had a home-cooked meal that wasn't breakfast. She couldn't remember when that was exactly. Suddenly, she had this craving for roast beef smothered in gravy. Then the craving grew to include mashed potatoes with the same gravy.

She could practically taste this. It was how badly she wanted to eat this again.  _It's all well and good, but if you want this, you're going to have to make it yourself,_ her conscience told her.

Michelle reached down and put that roast in her cart. Mary had tons of cookbooks. Michelle would just go up to the main house and borrow one. Surely one of them had instructions on how to make a beef roast. And Mary had so many cookbooks Michelle doubted she'd miss one. Michelle made up her mind to go over to the main house later and get a cookbook. She also wanted to get some of her things out of her old bedroom, too.

Michelle went over to get some potatoes, and then some butter and some milk. She didn't drink milk, but she thought she should get some anyway. She continued to push the cart throughout the store and as she did so, she was struck by another thought. It wasn't so much a thought as it was an image in her mind. For one moment, she saw in her mind's eye this image of Dan coming home one night and seeing that she made all this food. And he seemed to be pretty pleased by this.

Michelle thought that maybe if she was going to make this food, she should also have dessert. She wandered over to the baking goods section and she looked over the selection of cake mixes. Chocolate appealed to her the most, as Michelle was a chocolate fiend. She picked one box from the shelf, turned it around, and noticed that all she had to do was add some eggs, some water, and some oil. Easy enough.

Why don't you just make one yourself? It can't be that hard.

No, it couldn't be. Michelle put the box back on the shelf. She wasn't sure of all what went into making a cake from scratch. She'd have to look at a cookbook for that.

Satisfied with the contents in her cart, Michelle went up to the front to pay for the groceries. When she was finished, she found she had ten dollars left over. Not enough to buy a lamp, but Dan got paid on Friday. She would only have to put up with that overhead light for two more days.

After Michelle returned home, she put the groceries away. Then she sat down on the couch and stared at the blank television screen wondering what she should do next. If she were still in Denver, she most likely would have left the hotel and prowled around town or she might have gone to visit Aunt Margaret.

Harrisburg was not Denver. There was nothing to do here. Michelle didn't need to get her hair done, nor did she need to go into town to Kelly's for a burger, nor did she need to go to Simpson's for something. There were no interesting little shops near the university or parks or record stores or book stores. Dan was working and Michelle didn't feel like going outside to see what he was doing. It was too cold and she didn't want to run into people she didn't want to deal with at the moment. She was in a fairly good mood at the moment. She would have liked the company, though.

Michelle noticed the piles of boxes in the corner. Yesterday, she never got around to unpacking her things. Yesterday was the day that Dan told her he loved her for the first time. That was more important than unpacking.

Michelle supposed she should unpack her things. She got up from the couch and turned on the radio first. KSBF was playing something by the Osmonds, the Partridge Family, or the DiFranco Family. Michelle couldn’t tell the difference between any of them. Michelle made a face at the radio. It all sounded the same to her and what she heard, she didn't like. She wondered whatever happened to having teen idols like the Beatles. Beatles songs don't make you cringe ten years later.

Michelle started dragging boxes from the living room to the bedroom. She started unpacking her clothes and making room in the dresser for them. Then she started making room in the closet for some of her other clothes. Michelle decided to leave all of her summer clothes in the boxes, since it was the dead of winter and she had no reason to wear shorts and halter tops.

Then she went back into the living room to get the rest of her things, those boxes filled with mementoes she decided to save, books she owned, and records. Well, her records could stay in the living room, although she wondered how she was going to fit all of hers and Dan's records together. She decided to go through that later.

Michelle started dragging a box of things into the bedroom. Something stopped her. It was that Internal Fucking Critic again.

It's going to be a bitch to repack all this stuff when you leave again.

Who said I was leaving?

You will. Mr. Wonderful will see you for who you really are and he won't like what he sees. Mr. Wonderful will get tired of balling you. He's only in it for your cootch you know.

 _He is not,_ Michelle thought vehemently.  _He loves me. He said he loves me and I believe him._

Just like you believed all those other people, huh? You're such an idiot Michelle. You're a pathetic sad little girl and you never learn, do you? He's going to end up being just like the others.

 _No, he isn't,_ Michelle told that voice.  _I know he isn't. I just know it._

Michelle pushed the box back against the wall. Leave it to her Internal Fucking Critic to speak up at the wrong time. She had been in a good mood for being bored out of her skull. Now that was ruined.

Michelle wandered listlessly to the kitchen area. She supposed she should eat something or maybe get something out in case Dan came back for lunch. It was going on lunchtime, after all. She didn't feel all that hungry, so she went into the cupboard for a can of soup. Soup was better than sugar cookies.

Michelle made the soup, but Dan never came back for lunch. She put the leftover soup in the refrigerator, rinsed out the dirty bowl, spoon, and kettle, and then wondered what she should do next.

The cookbook. Michelle remembered that if she was going to make this roast beef and potatoes and gravy and chocolate cake, she needed something to tell her how to do it. Mary was gone for another week, and even if Mary was here, Michelle didn't want to ask her how to do this, either. Michelle didn't want Mary to make a big scene about it. She knew Mary would make a big scene, because Mary was the Happy Housewife who lived for cooking and cleaning and all things domestic, and Michelle coming to her for cooking advice would bring on the inevitable, "I told you so" and the even more inevitable remarks about settling down.

Michelle threw her coat on, grabbed the house key, and walked up to the main house. She went over to the big shelf that held Mary's collection of cookbooks. She scanned the titles printed on the spines; some of those spines were worn and creased. Michelle saw one title that made her snicker:  _Recipes for Your New Home._ Michelle took that one from the shelf and thumbed through it. She could use the laugh.

The cookbook was old, geared towards the new bride who was now in charge of keeping house. Although some of the text made Michelle laugh, the book did have some basic, practical cooking advice. It also explained various terms and what they meant. Michelle didn't know braising from parboiling. The recipes were for practical things, like casseroles, cakes, pies, chicken, and roasts. Nothing elaborate or fancy here.

Michelle decided to take the book with her. Then she thought of something else. Mary was gone for a week, which meant the mail was going to pile up down in the mailbox. Michelle decided to take a walk down to the mailbox. Maybe getting the mail would score some brownie points with Mary.

Michelle braced herself against the cold air as she stepped outside and trekked down the driveway to the mailbox. Thinking of Mary made her remember something else. Michelle still had to make amends to her for shitty way Michelle treated the other woman in the past eleven years. The Ninth Step said that you were supposed to make amends to those people who were hurt by your drinking and your drug abuse.

 _You have to make amends to Dan too,_ her conscience reminded her.  _For not calling him when you said you would and then calling him when you were drunk off your ass._

Michelle knew that her conscience was right. She did owe Dan an apology for that.

She reached the mailbox and pulled out a stack of mail. Michelle thumbed through it as she walked back up to the house. There were a few late Christmas cards, a tax form, some bills, and a thick envelope from the law firm of Crenshaw and Stodelmeyer. Michelle had an evil thought as to the contents of this envelope. She thought that maybe one of Dickie's "other women" might be suing him for paternity. Dick had other women on the side. Before she left Denver, she saw Dick in the hotel during some cattlemen's convention and he had an eighteen year old blonde on his arm. The bimbo was hanging on Dick's every word. They were in the lobby and then they disappeared together in the elevator. Dick cheating on his wife was nothing new. Dick always liked to sleep around. Michelle remembered waking up some mornings when she was little to see some woman she'd never seen before leaving and this woman wasn't the same one Dick brought home the last time.

Michelle was having gleefully wicked thoughts of how Dick's philandering had finally caught up with him. Michelle wasn't prepared to see that this thick envelope was addressed to her.

Absently, Michelle dropped off the other mail in the main house and then took the letter and the cookbook with her back to the cabin. When she got inside, she went straight for the couch, not bothering to take off her coat. She opened the envelope and she began to read.

Dear Miss O'Brien,

As you may know, your parents came to me to make out their will and to appoint me as the executor of their estate. It is my job to make sure that their wishes are carried out as expressed in their Last Will and Testament.

As the executor of their estate, it is my duty to inform you that as of your twenty-fourth birthday, you are to receive money and other things your parents have bequeathed to you. According to the terms of their Will, you are to receive, on your twenty-fourth birthday, the entire sum of the trust fund that was set up for you. Your parents had life insurance policies that were divided between you and your brother. Since your brother was already of legal age, he received his portion upon their deaths. Your $5,000.00 portion was held in trust until you reached the required age to collect it. The trust that was set up for you collected interest, and upon your birthday, you will start receiving the sum of $13,500 in monthly installments, as stipulated in your parents' will.

Also as stipulated in the Will, you are to receive exactly one-half of the deed to the property known as O'Brien's Irish Acres. This half was also held in trust for you until you reached the age of twenty-four.

However, your parents' Will also stipulated that in order for you to receive this, you must be currently unmarried. I will need verification of your current marital status. I also need to meet with you and have you sign some documents attesting to your marital status and to discuss a few other details regarding this matter. Please call the office to set up an appointment.

In the event that you are currently married, your parents' Will stipulates that you will receive the entire amount of your trust fund upon your twenty-fifth birthday and the portion of the property that would go to you will then go to your brother.

Sincerely,  
       Charles Crenshaw, Esquire

 

 _What?_  Michelle thought. She read the letter again.

I'm getting half this place? And what does being single have to do with it? What kind of weird game are my parents playing here?

Michelle knew that her parents had life insurance policies that totaled ten thousand dollars. She also knew that the ten grand had been split in half: half going to Dick and the other half going to her. And she knew that someday, she would get her half of that money. This wasn't something she dwelled on, as this money always seemed like some unknown thing to her. Michelle rarely thought about the money over the years, and it really wasn't important to her. If given a choice, she'd rather have had something that belonged to her parents than the money.

But the section about inheriting half the ranch was a surprise to her. Michelle had no idea that this was even in her parents' will. When their will was read, she wasn't present, as an eight year old was much too young to understand what was going on.

Michelle wondered why on Earth her marital status had anything to do with this in the first place. What did it matter if she were married or unmarried?

 _You know what this means, don't you?_ The Internal Fucking Critic asked.  _It means that you're stuck here for the rest of your life, up to your neck in cow shit. You can never leave now. Not even to follow Mr. Wonderful if he decides to leave this godforsaken place. Not even if the bastards do get you down. You're stuck here now._

Michelle didn't want the ranch. She had no interest in learning to run it. She thought cows stunk and ranching was boring. Michelle wondered if maybe she could sell her half of the ranch and get some money for that. She did need money and she wanted money of her own.

For the rest of the afternoon, Michelle's thoughts were on that letter. She called the lawyer's office to set up an appointment to see Mr. Crenshaw. The receptionist who answered the phone was a snippy sounding woman, whom Michelle remembered as someone who liked to gossip a lot. No doubt, she'd be on the phone later, informing Gladys or Myrtle or whatever other snippy friends she had that the O'Brien girl was back in town.

Dan called it a day around four. He put the tools away, put his coat back on, and walked back to the cabin. The icy air felt painful as it went into his lungs. Soon, he was at the door, twisting the knob in his gloved hand, then pushing the door open so he could walk into the warm cabin.

The cabin was quiet. Michelle didn't come to the door when he walked in and Dan was a little disappointed because he was kind of hoping she would come to the door. Seeing her would probably dispel his bad mood.

Dan didn't see her as he hung up his coat. The room was dim because of the fading December sunlight and none of the lights were on. Dan flipped on the light, then he rubbed his chilly hands together to warm them up. Then he saw Michelle sitting on the couch. The television wasn't on.

Dan went over to her. "Little dark in here, don't you think?" he remarked.

"Oh," Michelle replied, a bit startled. "I didn't hear you come in."

Dan sat on the couch next to her. He noticed that she held a piece of paper in her hand and then right next to her was a book. Dan looked at the book, titled  _Recipes for Your New Home._  Dan wondered if Michelle had been smoking dope during the day. He didn't smell any on her, though.

"Yours?" he asked, pointing at the book.

"Mary's," Michelle replied. "I borrowed it."

"Oh," he said. Michelle seemed to him to be preoccupied with something and he wondered if maybe that piece of paper she held in her hands had something to do with it. He hoped that was it and it wasn't because she was having second thoughts about staying here.

Michelle put the letter down. She didn't realize that Dan was home until he came over to the couch. She kind of felt bad that she didn't wait at the door for him. So she tried to make it up to him. "How was your day?" she asked.

That was the question Dan didn't want to have asked. He wanted to forget about his encounter with Pete Anderson or their little exchange. "It wasn't the greatest," he replied.

"Why not?" Michelle asked. She wondered if Dan's day was as strange as hers had been.

"Let's just say that I had a run-in with a co-worker I don't particularly like," Dan replied.

"Who?" Michelle wondered.

"Pete," Dan replied.

"Pete Anderson?" Michelle asked. Dan nodded. "Pencil Dick Pete?" she asked again.  _Great,_  she thought.  _Just great._

"Pencil Dick?" Dan wondered with a slight laugh.

"He has one," Michelle replied. "What did he say this time?"

 _This time?_  Dan wondered. Michelle caught the puzzled look on Dan's face.

"Pete's always saying something," Michelle explained. "He's a little shit bag weasel."

Dan gave a short laugh. "That about sums him up," he said. He wasn't sure if he should mention the rest of this to Michelle. He decided to mention it. Michelle had a right to know if someone was badmouthing her. "He warned me about you," Dan replied.

"Oh," Michelle replied. "I kind of figured that," she added. She noticed Dan's troubled expression. "Don't worry about it," she said. "He won't be the first one to do this, either. Don't pay any attention to him. Did he warn you about catching something from me?"

Dan nodded, albeit a little reluctantly.

"If I had something," Michelle said. "You would have caught it by now. The only thing you're probably going to catch from me is a cold." She laid her hand on Dan's arm reassuringly. "Don't worry about him, okay?" she said. "He's nothing but talk anyway."

This went better than Dan thought. At least Michelle seemed to not be worried about this. Now, though, he was curious about that letter.

"What's that?" he asked, indicating the letter.

Michelle's face clouded over a bit. "It's about my parents' will," she said. Michelle handed the letter to Dan. It was better that he read it himself than her explain this to him, especially since she didn't understand this herself.

Dan read the letter. Then he read it again, just to make sure he understood it the first time. When he finished, he put the letter down, turned to Michelle, and asked, "You're getting half this place?"

Michelle nodded. "In four weeks," she said. Then she added, "But I don't want it."

"Why?" Dan wondered. He could not picture Michelle taking an active interest in learning how to run a ranch. But another thought had crossed his mind, one he was now sure that Michelle hadn't thought of.

"What do I know about running things here?" she said. "I don't want to run things here. It means I'm stuck here, too."

Dan had split second attack of panic.  _She wants to leave already?_

Michelle noticed the fleeting look on Dan's face. "What if we want to move sometime, I mean? What if you decide to get a job somewhere else?"

"Oh," Dan replied, feeling a little foolish.  _She doesn't want to leave._ "Well," he said. "If you did own half this place, your brother couldn't kick you out."

Michelle hadn't thought of that, and she didn't know why she hadn't thought of that. The possibility of that happening was very real. Dick could come back and kick Michelle out when he found out she was living with the help and had no intention of leaving. "I hadn't thought of that," she replied. "I guess you're right."

"And if we wanted to leave someday," Dan went on. "You could always sell."

Michelle hadn't thought of that, either. But she was still confused as to why her marital status had anything to do with this.

Dan was, too. "But I don't know what you being single has to do with this," he said. "Are you going to see the lawyer?"

"On the second," Michelle replied. "I called and made the appointment."

 

saturday, december 29, 1973

 

Dan supposed he didn't really have to go into work on Saturday, but he did so more out of habit.  He was only required to put in forty hours a week, after all.  Even though he didn't set the alarm, his eyes opened up at six and he blinked in the darkness.  Michelle was asleep against his shoulder. 

Dan supposed he should go in for a bit, at least.  He was already getting strange looks for cutting out at four during the week ever since Michelle came back.  It might give the others a coronary if Dan didn't come in for a little while on Saturday.  But the bed was warm and the room was cold and the cold snap hadn't broken yet.  And it was Saturday. 

Responsibility won out.  Dan didn't work on Christmas Day, therefore, he didn't get paid.  But he worked twelve hours on Monday and ten the other three days, so he did have his forty hours in.  The extra money would just go in the bank. 

Reluctantly, he started to extract himself from Michelle without waking her up.  Last night, after work, he and Michelle ran up to Scottsbluff to get some lamps and there were now two of them sitting on each side of the bed.  He didn't have to worry about waking her up by turning on the overhead light. 

Michelle shifted in the bed.  "Where are you going?" she mumbled, still half-asleep. 

"Work," Dan replied softly. 

Michelle blinked a few times, clearing the sleep from her eyes.  "Do you have to?" she asked.  "It's the weekend." 

"Just for a little while," Dan replied.  "I won't do a full day." 

"Can't you go in later?" Michelle asked, snuggling herself closer to him.

"I'd like to get this out of the way and have the rest of the day with you," he replied, and then kissed the top of her head.

Michelle thought that was nice, but Dan going in early didn't fit with her plans for the day.  The later he went in, the better it was for her.  She tried to think of a rebuttal for that argument.  The problem was, there wasn't a rebuttal for that.  She said the only thing she could think of.   "But it's cold," she said. 

"It was cold yesterday and the day before and the day before that," Dan replied. 

 _Think fast, Michelle, or he's going to walk in later before you're even ready for him._ "But  _I'm_  cold," she said.  And for effect, she curled herself around him as if trying to keep warm.   _This better work._

"We can't have that, can we?" Dan replied, putting his arm around her shoulders and pulling Michelle close.  "Better?" he asked.

"Much," Michelle replied. 

They lay in silence for a bit, listening to the asthmatic wheeze of the old furnace as it tried to heat the little cabin and the tick of the clock and the wail of the icy wind as it blew across the plains and around the buildings. 

Absently, Michelle took her finger and slowly traced lines up and down Dan's chest.  Each time, that line grew a little longer, almost in a teasing way.  When her finger reached his waist on one trek, Dan gently gripped her wrist.  Michelle looked up at him. 

"You're not cold, are you?" Dan asked with a lazier version of that wicked grin Michelle knew pretty well by now.  He turned to his side to face her.

"Not anymore," Michelle replied with a saucy smile. 

"Then why didn't you just say so?" Dan asked. 

"Because," Michelle replied.  "This is much more fun that just saying, 'Dan, I'm horny.'"  She brought her mouth to his and she kissed him slowly.  "Don't you think?"  She kissed him again. 

Dan's only reply was to deepen the kiss.  He tightened his hold around Michelle and then he rolled over onto his back so she was on top of him.  Michelle positioned herself so that her knees were on either side of Dan.  His hands roamed all over her.  Michelle's kisses grew more fervorant, more insistent.  

When there was a pause in the action, Michelle whispered, "Are you sure you still want to go in early?" 

"Work can wait," Dan replied, his voice husky. 

"I thought so," Michelle replied wickedly right before she kissed him again.

It was around ten-thirty in the morning when Dan finally made it into work.  After this morning's diversion, he fell asleep for a little bit.  He and Michelle woke up around eight.  Then, after he showered, Dan decided that he was hungry for bacon and eggs, so he got out the frying pan and made them.  Michelle watched him, asking him questions here and there about how to make that and he answered them, taking notice of the fact that Michelle seemed to be showing some interest in learning to cook.  After two days of TV dinners and macaroni and cheese, Dan decided, on the pretense of going out on a date, that they would have something decent for supper last night.  He wondered if maybe Michelle was getting tired of TV dinners, too. 

"Do you like omelettes?" Michelle asked Dan as he was turning the bacon. 

"Yeah," he said.  "I love them.  But I don't know how to make them.  Do you like them?" 

"I do," Michelle replied.  "I haven't had one since I was in Denver, though."  Michelle made a mental note to check that cookbook to see if there were any recipes for omelettes in there.  Maybe next Saturday morning, she could get up before Dan and start making them and he'd be surprised by this.  That is, if what she planned for tonight went well.   _One meal at a time, Michelle._

After breakfast was eaten, as Dan was putting on his coat, Michelle casually asked, "Are you coming back for lunch?"

"No," Dan replied.  "Unless you want me to." 

"You don't have to," Michelle replied.   _Because if you do, you'll ruin my surprise._  

"I should be okay for the day," he said, much to Michelle's relief.  "I'll probably be back around five or so."  Dan zipped up his coat and put on his gloves.  Then he asked, "Got anything in mind for supper?" 

For a split second, Michelle panicked, thinking that maybe Dan was on to her.  "Probably more of the same," she replied.  "We've still got a few more TV dinners to eat."  She noticed Dan's slightly disappointed expression.   _Whew_ , she thought. 

"You want to go out and get something tonight?" Dan asked. 

"Do you have any place in mind?" Michelle asked.  There was only Kelly's Diner in Harrisburg.  Scottsbluff had a McDonald's, a Howard Johnson's, several "family" restaurants that promised home cooking, and if you really wanted to shell out the bucks, The Orchard. 

"Not really," Dan replied.  "I thought I'd leave that up to you." 

"Well," Michelle pretended to think.  "I'm not sure." 

"Think about it and you can let me know what you decide when I get done for the day," Dan said.  "I gotta run."  He leaned down and gave Michelle a quick kiss good-bye, told her that he loved her, and was out the door. 

As soon as Dan left, and Michelle was sure he wasn't going to suddenly reappear, Michelle heaved a sigh of relief.  She might be able to pull this off after all.  If Dan was expecting to go out tonight, he was definitely going to be surprised when he came home later. 

During the week, Michelle read that cookbook, making note of things she needed to make all of this.  When she trekked out to collect the mail, she pilfered some pans and other implements from the main house that were not in the cabin.  She also took some ingredients she needed to make this. 

Michelle decided to make the cake first, so that it would cool and she could get it frosted before she got down to making the actual meal.  With the cookbook in front of her, she measured out various ingredients and put them into a bowl.  Then she got to the part where the recipe called for melted chocolate.  She had the chocolate, but it was still solid.  The book said to melt it on the stove using a double boiler.  Michelle didn't have a double boiler.   _Must have forgotten to get that_ , she thought.  She threw her coat on and went to the main house to get it. 

When she returned, she realized she didn't know how a double boiler worked.  So Michelle went to the section of the cookbook to find out.  Once the chocolate was melted and mixed with the other ingredients, she greased and floured the cake pan.  Michelle decided that she immensely disliked the feeling of shortening on her fingers.   Then she took the bag of flour and poured some into the pan.  Michelle poured a bit too much into the pan and some of it flew up into the air in a white cloud.  Her face and her hair were dusted with white, as well as the front of her sweater.  Looking down at her sweater, Michelle decided to take care of that later and she also vowed to only wear old clothes when she was doing this.  Mary never made this much of a mess when she did this. 

Now she was supposed to dust the pan with flour.  Michelle wasn't sure how to do this, until she remembered seeing Mary once take a cake pan, hold it up, move it around, and smack it until all the shortening was coated with flour.  Michelle held up the pan, gave it a good smack, and moved it.  The flour moved, all right, but since she put too much flour into the pan, she got another dusting. 

Somehow, Michelle managed to finish that task, and she poured the batter into the pan, and then put the pan in the oven.  Michelle stuck her finger in the now empty bowl, curious to see if the batter tasted any good.  She stuck her finger in her mouth and decided that it would do. 

While the cake was baking, Michelle cleaned up her mess.  Then she went to clean herself up.  After her second shower of the day, she put on old clothes. As she was rummaging around for something old to wear, Michelle ran across the blue sweater Dan gave her for Christmas.  She decided that after all this cooking was done, she was going to wear that.  Then she looked at the cookbook again, at the roast recipe, to see how long this was going to take and how much of a mess she could possibly make. 

When the timer went off, Michelle pulled the cake out of the oven and looked at it.  One side was higher than the other.  Cakes weren't supposed to be lopsided.   _I can always put more frosting on that side and nobody will know,_ she thought to herself. 

Michelle had better luck with the frosting.  After the cake was cold, she made some chocolate frosting and spread it over the cake.  She also had a little taste, and it was a bit too sweet.  Michelle reminded herself not to put so much sugar in it next time. 

Then she got to work on the roast.  The recipe she was using said that she was supposed to mix a bunch of herbs together and rub the roast with it.  She had to run back up to the main house to get the herbs she forgot to get during the week.  After those were mixed together, she took a handful of this mixture and dropped it on the roast, then she took her hands and rubbed it in.  Michelle decided that touching raw meat was something she liked as much as the feel of shortening on her hands.  But she got the seasonings on the meat, even though some parts of the roast had clumps of the mixture while others were sparsely covered.   _There's got to be an easier way to do this_ , she thought. 

Michelle finished preparing the roast and she put that in the oven to cook slowly.  Then she went back to the cookbook and something caught her eye.  When she read it, she felt really stupid.  Somehow, Michelle missed the part that said to put the roast and the seasonings in a dish and roll the roast in the seasoning mixture.   _Oh well, there's always next time_ , she thought. 

There were potatoes to be peeled, and Michelle did that next.  A few potatoes had to be thrown out, as they had too many black spots in them.  Michelle didn't know to look for that sort of thing when she bought them.  Michelle peeled them and then she cut them up, and she had to throw another one out when she cut her thumb on one and bled on it. 

Soon the potatoes were boiling on the stove and Michelle had a few moments to relax.  She leaned against the counter and surveyed the kitchen.  Suddenly, a thought occurred to her.  Michelle never remembered seeing June Cleaver or Donna Reed have a big stack of dishes to wash after a meal.  Michelle decided to wash the dishes she dirtied earlier.  When she finished that, she checked on the potatoes and decided to start the beans.  She pulled a can of green beans from the cupboard, opened them, and she dumped them into a pot.  Michelle peered into the pot and frowned.  The beans were the wrong color.  They were green, like they should be, but they were this washed out green color and not the bright green she remembered the beans Mary always cooked.  Michelle glanced at the clock.  It was now going on four and Dan said he'd be back around five or so.  She only had an hour.  Simpson's closed at four on Saturdays and she didn't have time to run up to Scottsbluff nor could she leave all this food, either.  She really didn't want to have these beans that looked so…sickly.  Michelle threw her coat on and went back up to the main house to see if she could find beans. 

Michelle looked in the cupboard and didn't see any.  Frantic, she looked again.  Then she gave up.  She'd have to make do with the beans she had. 

 _You're actually worried about beans?_ That Internal Critic asked her in a mocking way. 

 _I don't want to screw this up,_ Michelle thought in retort. 

 _You're pathetic, you know that,_ the Internal Critic replied. 

 _Shut the hell up,_ Michelle thought. 

Michelle went back to the house.  The potatoes were done and they needed to be drained and mashed.  And there was gravy to be made.  Michelle took care of the potatoes first.  They were lumpy, not like Mary's.  Mary's mashed potatoes were never lumpy.   _Maybe Dan won't notice,_ Michelle thought.  Then Michelle made the gravy, which was also lumpy and on the thin side.  She hoped that Dan wouldn't notice that, either. 

Everything was nearly ready.  Michelle got out the dishes.  She thought about setting the table, but they didn't have a table.  Meals were eaten either standing by the counter or sitting in front of the television.  There was a card table against the wall.  A little Christmas tree stood on that table.  That would have to do.  Michelle was certain there were chairs that went with this table.  Michelle found them in the closet.  She set the table up and set the chairs around it.  Then she set the table. 

Michelle looked at the mismatched dishes and thought to herself,  _This won't do at all.  It looks terrible._ She wondered if maybe she should run up to the house to get Mary's good dishes, but a glance at the clock told her she didn't have enough time.  The mismatched dishes would have to do. 

Michelle put the roast on a plate, the lumpy potatoes in one bowl, the lumpy gravy in another bowl, and the sickly looking green beans in yet another bowl.  She set those on the table.  A glance at the clock told her that she had ten minutes to spare.  Suddenly tired, she slumped in one of the chairs.  She looked down and saw she was still wearing the old clothes she put on before.  Michelle jumped up and went to change into that blue sweater.  She raced back into the kitchen with about two minutes to spare. 

Right at five, Dan came through the door.  Michelle was waiting for him at the door, trying to look casual. 

"Hi," Dan greeted her as he hung up his coat. 

"Hi yourself," Michelle smiled, hoping she sounded casual.  She was brimming with anticipation.  She went closer to Dan, slid her arms around his neck and said to him, "I missed you." 

"I missed you, too," he replied before kissing her soft, warm mouth.  "Mmm," he added after he kissed her.  "You're warm." 

"And you're cold," Michelle replied saucily.  

"It's cold outside," Dan replied.  "But I've got you to keep me warm."  He smiled at her.  She smiled back at him. 

"Did you think of…"  Dan never finished his thought.  He just happened to look over Michelle's shoulder and he noticed the table.  And then he smelled the food. 

This was the last thing Dan was expecting to see.  He really shouldn't have been surprised, since Michelle seemed to always have her nose buried in that cookbook for the past few days, but he was surprised.  He didn't think she would actually make something so soon. 

"Did you do this?" Dan asked.   _Of course she did.  Who else would have done this?_   Dan didn't know what else to say.

"I was bored," Michelle replied, trying to sound nonchalant.  Dan wasn't buying it, though.  He saw the look in Michelle's eye. 

"I thought--," he began, but he couldn't finish that thought either. 

"Yes," Michelle said, in her old sarcastic way of last summer.  "I humbled myself and made something decent for a change.  Now sit down and eat it before it gets cold."  She smiled at him. 

It wasn't the best meal Dan ever had.  The roast was stringy and when he took a bite in one spot, it seemed extra flavorful to him.  The potatoes were lumpy and the gravy was lumpy and the beans needed salt.  It was not a good meal by Helen Belden standards or Mary O'Brien standards, but Dan didn't care about that.  For not knowing how to cook, Michelle did a pretty good job of it. 

As the meal progressed, Dan was feeling pretty good inside.  He was touched, knowing that Michelle did this for him.  And then he realized that this morning's little distraction must have had something to do with this.  Had he gone in at six, he would have been back by lunchtime, and Michelle wouldn't have been able to do this without him knowing it. 

Michelle watched as Dan ate, waiting for him to say something, anything.  She took note of the fact that he didn't seem to grimace while he ate this.  She knew the roast was a little tough and the mashed potatoes and gravy had lumps in them and that the sickly looking canned beans had no flavor to them.  Maybe he didn't notice this?  Or maybe he wasn't saying anything because he didn't want to hurt her feelings? 

 _You should just stick to the stuff you know,_ the Internal Critic mocked.   _Giving head and fucking up other people's lives._

Michelle wished that voice would shut up.  The problem was, she didn't know how to shut up that voice. 

Michelle was dying to know what Dan thought of this.  Unable to stand waiting any longer, she asked, "Well?" 

Dan looked up at her, smiled, and said, "It's good." 

"Really?" Michelle asked. 

"Yes, really," Dan replied. 

"I mean, it's not like what Mary does--" Michelle said hastily, but Dan interrupted her.

"You're not Mary," Dan replied.  "I don't expect you to be Mary, either."  He set his fork down.  "For never doing this before, you did a good job."  Then he smiled.  "You can relax, okay?"

Michelle looked relieved.  This went a lot better than she hoped.  Then her Internal Critic chose that moment to speak up again.   _He's only saying that to get into your pants, you know._

Michelle decided to ignore that voice.  If she couldn't get it to shut up one way, maybe ignoring it would work.  "I also made some dessert," she told Dan. 

"I get dessert out of this, too?" he asked.  "I must have been a really good boy to deserve this." 

As they finished the meal, both of them were struck by a thought.  It was more of a feeling actually, than a thought.  Both were struck by how homey this all felt. 

There was something oddly comforting to both Dan and Michelle about sitting at a rickety old card table eating stringy roast and lumpy potatoes off of mismatched dishes.  There was comfort in this as it reminded both of them of a time long ago when in a small apartment in New York City and in the kitchen of a ranch house one hundred yards away, there was a mother and a father in each of those places and the world was still a safe and secure place.  Regardless of the location, the mother would have spent a few hours making a meal like this one and when it was ready, she would put it out on the table.  And then the father would come home from a days' work, hang up his coat, kiss his wife and then ruffle his son's dark hair or give his daughter a kiss on the cheek.  And then they'd sit down to eat, and they would all talk about their day.  But then, the table was sturdier and the dishes matched. 

That's what this whole thing felt like.  It felt like those long ago days before both their worlds were turned upside down.  The difference between then and now was those children were now the grown-ups.  They weren't the mother and the father, nor were they the husband and the wife, even though they lived under the same roof.  They were just the boyfriend and the girlfriend living in sin and playing the game "Let's Play House". 

But it still felt secure and warm and it almost felt like those old times again. 

The cake turned out all right, even though Michelle thought that the frosting was a little too sweet for her liking.  The low end of the lopsided cake was kind of hard, so they took pieces from the higher, fluffy end. 

After the meal was finished, Michelle got up and started clearing the card table.  Dan got up and helped her. 

"You don't have to," Michelle said. 

"It's the least I can do," Dan replied.  "You did all this work." 

Michelle washed and Dan dried.  As they worked, Dan reminded Michelle that he had Sundays off.  "Anything you want to do tomorrow?" 

"I don't know," Michelle replied.  "Nothing's open in town and it's still pretty cold out.  Why?  Did you have something in mind?" 

"Not really," Dan replied.  "If it were warmer, I'd suggest going for a ride." 

"In the truck?" Michelle asked, holding a plate under the running faucet to rinse it off.  She set the plate in the dish rack.  Then Dan picked it up.  

"No," he said.  "I thought we could take a couple of the horses out." 

"I don't know how to ride," Michelle pointed out. 

"At all?" Dan asked. 

Michelle shook her head.  "Never had any interest in it," she said.  

"Well," Dan said.  "I can teach you." 

"Why couldn't we just ride on the same horse?" Michelle asked.  "Wouldn't that be much more fun?" 

"Too much weight for the horse," Dan replied, although the idea of him and Michelle on the same horse was kind of tempting.  But it was still too cold out and any horseback riding would have to wait. 

"I've also got Monday off," Dan said.  "But I have to work on New Year's Day." 

"So much for going out," Michelle said.  "If you have to work early the next day." 

Dan took another dish from the dish rack.  "Why?  Did you have something in mind?" 

"Not really," Michelle replied, placing some forks in the silverware cup after she rinsed them off.  "There's not much to do here and it goes the same for New Year's Eve.  You can either go to a bar or you can go to Pachefski's Ballroom in Scottsbluff and watch some orchestra that thinks they're Guy Lombardo.  That's what all the old people do anyway.  And I don't feel much like bar hopping, either."  

"We'll stay in then," Dan said.  "I'm sure we can find something to do." 

"Yeah, I'm sure we can," Michelle agreed.  Then her conscience spoke up.   _You still need to tell Dan about all that time you spent in rehab, you know._

 _I know,_ Michelle thought.  She wasn't sure when or how she should bring this up, though. 

As Michelle scrubbed one pot, her Internal Critic chose to speak.   _If you tell Mr. Wonderful about rehab, he's going to drop you like a hot potato, missy.  Who wants to be with some chick who's on drugs?_

 _He won't,_ Michelle thought.   _Dan's not like that.  And I'm not on drugs anymore_  

 _Oh, I'll just bet,_ the Internal Critic snorted.   _They're all like that.  You'll fall off the wagon again._

 _He's is not,_ Michelle insisted.   _Dan is not like that.  He loves me.  He really does.  And I'm not going to fall off the wagon again, this time._

As Michelle was waging her internal war of words, Dan's thoughts drifted to something he hadn't thought about in a few days.   _I bet Mart's in that psychiatric hospital by now._

 _Yeah, because you put him there,_ his own Internal Critic said.   _If it weren't for you, he wouldn't be there right now._

Dan closed his eyes momentarily, willing that voice to stop.  Mart Belden was the last thing he wanted to think about. 

 _That's right, Danny,_ that voice continued.   _You put him there because you stood there like a chickenshit and didn't do anything.  Bob-Whites look out for each other.  You let your best friend down, Danny.  You let him down and you let the others down.  It's all your fault.  And now your best friend is probably getting shock treatment right now because of something you did, or should I say didn't do.  You know how they do that, right?  They strap him to a table and give him a few jolts and then he screams, probably just like he screamed the day he stepped on that mine._

Dan willed that voice to shut up, but that voice wouldn't listen.  He felt the blackness coming on again.  He didn't want the blackness to come back.  For the last few days, Dan had been fairly happy.  He'd been happy because Michelle came back and she chased the blackness away from him when she said she was staying for good and when she told him that she loved him.  And the blackness stayed away every time she told him that she loved him, too. 

 _It's not going to happen again,_ he thought to himself.   _Damn it, it's not going to happen again._   

Dan thought about those nights when he woke up from a nightmare and what happened when Michelle was there.  The blackness and the despair and the fear dissipated because she was there and she was close to him and he felt so close to her.   _Michelle can get rid of the blackness.  She's the only one who can._

Dan set the dishtowel down on the counter.  Quietly, he moved behind Michelle, who was still working on that pan.  The dishes were almost finished.  There was probably only three left.  They could wait. 

Dan slid his arms around Michelle's narrow waist.  He buried his nose in her hair, inhaling the scent of her shampoo.  He wasn't sure what exactly the scent was, but it reminded him of sunshine and warm spring days and the heady scent of flowers in bloom.  Lightness.  That was it.  It reminded Dan of lightness, the opposite of blackness. 

Dan reached his hand up to touch Michelle's hair.  It felt soft to his touch.  Michelle's hair was long, reaching to about the middle of her back.  Dan pushed some of that long hair away, exposing Michelle's graceful neck.  Dan learned over the course of the past few days that Michelle liked it a lot when he kissed her on the neck.  Dan leaned down, brushing his lips over her warm skin.  Michelle gave a slight gasp at the sensation and then her breathing changed. 

Michelle stopped what she was doing for a moment.  She took her hands out of the dishwater and closed her eyes for a bit, savoring the feel of Dan's mouth on her neck.  She opened her eyes again and she wanted to turn around and look at Dan, but she was unwilling to break any contact between Dan's mouth and her neck.  Without looking at him, she said, "So is my being this domestic goddess a big turn on for you?" she asked in a teasing way.  "Is this what I have to do to get you in the mood?" 

"You're a big turn on for me," Dan replied in a husky voice between kisses.  "I have no problem getting in the mood."  To prove it to her, Dan pressed himself against her back and Michelle could feel the evidence of his arousal.  "You could be shoveling shit out in the barns, and I'd still want to fuck you."  Dan's mouth began to travel up Michelle's neck. 

"You always know the most romantic things to say," Michelle teased him.  "But the dishes aren't going to wash themselves you know."  With that, Michelle stuck her hands back into the dishwater and resumed washing the pot.  However, in spite of this, she tilted her head over to one side, giving Dan more and easier access to her neck. 

 _Playing hard to get, huh,_ Dan thought.   _Well, I'll show her._

"They can wait," Dan said between kisses. 

"No they can't," Michelle replied. 

"Yes, they can," Dan replied.  "I want you."   _I need you.  You're the only one that can drive away the blackness._

"No, they can't," Michelle replied, turning around to look at Dan.

"Yes, they can," Dan replied once again. He tried to sound playful, but Michelle thought she could detect a sense of urgency in his voice. She saw the look on his face, the "I Really, Really Want You" look, but when she saw the look in his eye, she saw something different. She saw the "Please Make This Go Away" look.

Something was up, that was for sure. Michelle didn't know what it was that was bothering Dan, but something definitely was.

"You're right," she said. "The dishes can wait." Then she reached up behind Dan's head and pulled him into a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> During the Vietnam Era, the National Guard was not like it is now. The Army wasn't like it is now. When the Army needed personnel, they drafted people. Since the Army became all-volunteer in the Seventies, whenever there was a need for more personnel, they went to the Reserves and the National Guard. People went into the Guard during Vietnam to avoid getting drafted into the Army and/or having to do hazardous duty. References to anyone who served in the Guard that are derogatory is a reflection of the Vietnam Era and the sentiments of some veterans and not of the National Guard or Reserves today. Some Vietnam Veterans felt people who went into the Guard or Reserves to avoid Vietnam service were just as cowardly as those who went to Canada. Some felt that people who went into the Guard and Reserves served their country just as much as they (the veterans) did and that was better than running off to Canada to avoid the draft.


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dan and Michelle start to learn more about each other.

**Sunday, December 30, 1973**

It was two in the afternoon and neither Dan nor Michelle felt any inclination to get out of bed. For all of last night and most of today, their day consisted of a pattern of make love, talk, fall asleep, and make love again. Presently the two of them were lying close in the drowsiness afterward and not saying much.

Michelle felt her stomach growl. "We should probably eat something," she said to Dan.

"We should," he agreed. "But I don't want to get out of bed." The bed was warm, Michelle was warmer, and the cabin was cold.

"Neither do I," Michelle replied. "And I don't think I could walk to the refrigerator, either."

"Oh, did I wear you out?" Dan asked in a teasing way.

"Yes, you did," Michelle replied. "But in a good way. I don’t think my legs would support me right now."

"That's a good thing, right?" Dan asked her.

"You making my knees weak is always a good thing," she replied giving Dan a quick kiss on the cheek. "I suppose I could  _try_  to get up and get something to eat," she added with a smile.

"I'll get it," Dan said. "I wouldn't want you to trip and fall and spill lunch all over the floor or anything." He slid out of bed and headed off towards the kitchen, not bothering to cover himself. As he walked out the bedroom door, Michelle let out a wolf whistle.

Dan turned around to find Michelle looking at him innocently.

"You're terrible, you know that?" he said to her. Dan leaned against the doorjamb.

"Me? Terrible?" Michelle replied, feigning innocence.

"Yeah," Dan said. "Leering at me like you're some dirty old woman."

"Can't help it," Michelle replied. "You've got a nice ass." She gave that saucy, mischievous smile Dan was starting to love a lot.

Dan laughed. He couldn't help it. He shook his head and then he said, "I don't know what I'm going to do with you, you know that?"

"Yes, you do," Michelle replied. "You know very well what to do with me." She smiled slyly at him. "But," she added. "What about the food?"

"I'm getting it," Dan said. "You distracted me."

"I think it's the other way around," Michelle replied. "You distracted me."

"We'll discuss this later," Dan replied, heading for the kitchen.

As Michelle waited, she heard Dan rummaging through the refrigerator, then in the cupboards, her conscience spoke up.

You have to tell Dan about rehab, Michelle. You shouldn't put this off any longer.

 _I know,_ Michelle thought.

Dan returned to the bedroom with two small plates and a bottle of Coke. Each plate held a piece of cake on it. He set one plate on the nightstand and handed the other to Michelle. When she saw the plate, she frowned a bit.

"What?" Dan said. "I thought you said you were hungry."

"I am," Michelle replied.

"I didn't think you'd want to wait for me to heat something up, so I just got the cake," Dan said. "And it's cold in here and I didn't want to stand around waiting for the food to get hot."

"It's not that," Michelle said.

"What is it?"

"You forgot the forks," Michelle replied.

"Just eat it with your fingers," Dan suggested. "I'm not going back into that cold kitchen to get forks." He shivered for effect.

"We can't have that, now can we?" Michelle replied in a teasing way.

The two of them started eating the cake, but feeding themselves turned into feeding the cake to each other, which led to some rather playful lovemaking. Afterward, the two of them lay close, catching their breath.

"Are you warm now?" Michelle asked in a lazy way.

"Yes," Dan replied in the same lazy way. "I'm warm now."

The couple fell silent and eventually they dozed off for a few hours. Dan woke up first and noticed that the sun had gone down. He turned on the lamp next him, making sure that the light was on low. He was content to just lie there at the moment and watch Michelle sleep.

Dan cradled Michelle close to him and his mind drifted to someone he hadn't thought about in awhile. Marianne Ingersoll, his old girlfriend, who waited three years for Dan to come home from the war and then broke up with him a year after that because she couldn't handle his nightmares and she just didn't seem to understand him anymore. Marianne said he'd changed too much and she wasn't sure she liked the change.

Marianne and Michelle were different. Marianne was a good girl and a little timid about certain things, while Michelle had a past and wasn't timid about certain things at all. Marianne wouldn't dream of uttering a four-letter word and didn't like it when Dan did, but Michelle could curse worse than some guys Dan knew and she didn't even blink when Dan swore. Dan could not even begin to fathom Marianne Ingersoll saying some of the things that Michelle said last night during the heat of the moment.

And then there was the matter of the blow job Michelle gave him last night. Dan still couldn't get over that one. There were two women in Dan's life who were willing to do that to him, Michelle and Jane Morgan. Marianne didn't want to do it. Jane Morgan was willing to do it, but she didn't want to swallow. But Michelle…

But that wasn't the kicker of this entire thing. What put Michelle above Marianne as far as Dan was concerned was the fact that Michelle accepted Dan for who he was. She didn't try to change him, nor did she try to pressure him into doing something he didn't want to do. Michelle knew that he had hurts and she acknowledged this and she tried to make Dan feel better, even if the good feelings only lasted for a short while. A short while of feeling good was better than not feeling good at all. Over the last few days, other than his run-in with Pete, Dan had been feeling very good. He hadn't felt this good for this long since Thanksgiving.

There were times during the fall, before he went to see Michelle in Denver, that Dan wasn't so sure about the fact that Michelle had a past. But now her past didn’t matter. Dan had a past, too, and it wasn't fair to judge her when he was in the same position. Her past no longer mattered to Dan now because Michelle was willing to give up this wild life she lived to be with him. Dan had this feeling that Michelle had become unhappy with her life the way it was, but he still couldn't get over that she would give it up to be with him. He wasn't rich, he wasn't famous, he was just a former juvenile delinquent. He was a veteran of the Vietnam War, and some people looked at him with contempt for that. And then some people said that the war did things to his head. But Michelle was willing to give up hobnobbing with rich rock stars who had more money and had more fame and were admired to be with someone like him.

Dan didn't think he deserved her.

Dan felt Michelle stir slightly. He watched her open her eyes slowly. After a few minutes, she mumbled, "What time is it?"

"After five," Dan replied. He kissed the top of her head and she gave him a sleepy smile in return.

They lay in silence as Michelle let the sleep fall away. Dan was just content to lie like this and do nothing else. He didn't notice that as Michelle grew more alert, she seemed to be preoccupied with something.

"I have to tell you something," Michelle said after awhile.

"What is it?" Dan wondered. Then he noticed the somewhat troubled look on her face.

"It's about last fall," she said.

"What about last fall?"

Michelle looked at Dan's chest instead of his face. "It's about why I didn’t call you when I said I would," she replied.

"What about it?" Dan asked. At the time, he wondered what was going on, but after awhile, he got over it.

"I'm sorry for not doing that," Michelle said, looking up at him briefly. "And I'm sorry for the one time I did, being drunk off my ass when I did it."

"It's no big deal," Dan replied. "Don't worry about it."

Michelle thought she should be relieved that Dan wasn't upset about it, but she wasn't. There was still more to say. "There's more," she said.

"There is?" Dan wondered again. "What? You went back on the road again."

"Not exactly," Michelle replied. She took a deep breath and willed her Internal Critic to shut up. That voice was nagging at her to keep her mouth shut. She extracted herself from Dan and propped herself up on her elbow so she could really look at him. "I didn't exactly go back on the road right away," she said.

"Where did you go?" Dan asked. He turned on his side to face her.

"I went back to LA," Michelle said. "I went home and I did a lot of thinking. For two weeks, that's all I did. I'd walk on the beach and think or I'd sit on the couch and think or I'd lie in bed at night and think."

"What were you thinking about?" Dan asked her.

"You," Michelle said. "Me. My life. I thought about this for two weeks and when I was done thinking I went to a place called Briarton."

"What's Briarton?" Dan asked her.

"Drug rehab," Michelle replied. "I went there for twenty-eight days and I got sober because I decided that, yes, I was going to come back to Nebraska and when I did, I was going to do it sober."

"You're on the wagon?" Dan asked.

Michelle nodded. "Whoever is in charge of this kind of thing said that if I wanted my life to be better, I had to stop using drugs and I had to stop drinking first. Then I could take care of the other things. So I went to rehab, went through withdrawals, scrubbed toilets, talked to a shrink, took Jimmy Page as my higher power, and I walked out of there clean and sober."

"You took Jimmy Page as your higher power?" Dan asked. He didn't know if he should be amused by this.

"You're supposed to turn your life over to some higher power and you're supposed to let them worry about all those things you obsess over, like for me, getting Dick's approval. I let Jimmy Page worry about that now."

"But why Jimmy Page?" Dan asked.

"Private joke," Michelle replied. "And I'm not so sure about this God thing, so I didn't think it was right to take God as my higher power when I'm not so sure about religious stuff like that. This one guy who was in the group I was in took Spiro Agnew as his higher power. It doesn't mean that I'm now a member of some religion that worships Jimmy Page and this religion has Scripture that's nothing but lyrics to Zeppelin songs. And no, this doesn't mean I'm into that Crowley stuff, either." Michelle went on. "The shrink said we could take anyone we wanted as our higher power," Michelle explained. "The point of doing this is that you turn all those things you obsess over to this higher power you've taken so you stop obsessing over them."

Dan was listening intently. "So if you went through this, then why were you…?"

"Drunk when I did call you?" Michelle finished for him. "I fell off the wagon. I went to see the band again and I got sucked back into the partying. I didn't do drugs this time, I just got drunk. I had a harder time kicking the bottle than I did kicking drugs. But then one night, I remembered that I'd said I'd call you, so I did. And afterwards, I realized that I did this while I was drunk and I felt so bad, I went back to rehab again. That was in October. Other than a couple of slips, I've been sober for about a month and a half." Michelle looked at him intently, because her conscience was urging her to say the words she'd only been able to admit to herself and to her aunt. "I'm an alcoholic, Dan," she said. "A recovering alcoholic."

Dan's mind was racing. This was surprising, but yet it wasn't surprising. He had noticed that Michelle hadn't touched a drop of alcohol since she came back and he did notice the absence of the marijuana smell that seemed to precede her last summer. But he wasn't sure if he should tell her that he noticed this, so he didn't. But as he listened to Michelle, he felt very proud of her for doing this. And then he was struck with a thought. Drugs and alcohol seemed to go hand in hand with the fast life Michelle lived. Giving that up meant that Michelle wanted nothing to do with her former life. She wanted the past to stay where it was. The drugs and the sex and the wild times were her past and Dan was her present. Any lingering doubts Dan had about Michelle leaving him to go back to that life disappeared at that very moment. Dan felt more secure than he had in a long time.

"I'm proud of you," he told her. "I'm very proud of you, Michelle."

"You are?" Michelle asked him.

"Yes," Dan replied. "I am. That couldn't have been an easy thing to do." He reached out to touch her cheek.

Michelle felt so relieved. She let Dan pull her close to him and cradle her to him once again and she began to relax. That Internal Critic was wrong for a change. Dan didn't have a problem with this and he actually said he was proud of her for doing what she did.

But there was more that Michelle had to say, something else to get off her chest. "You remember that one night I called you from New York?" she asked. She felt Dan nod his head in reply. "I went to New York to give Barry the keys to my place," she said. "The band was in New York and I decided that I wasn't going to wait for them to get back. I made up my mind that I was going back to Nebraska."

"You went to New York to give this guy the keys to your place?" Dan asked her. "Why?"

"Like I said, I couldn't wait. And I had some things to say to them, too. Barry owned the house I lived in and he paid the bills for me because I didn't have a job. That's why I gave him the keys," Michelle said. "I was supposed to fly back to LA the next morning, and Barry said I could crash in his room. He also said I should think about what I was doing before going back to Nebraska and that's why I went to Denver first."

"So you called from his room," Dan said.

Michelle nodded. Then she laughed shortly. "I spent most of the night in the hallway, though," she said. "Barry had someone in there with him until five in the morning. I was waiting for the other person to leave first. And when the other person left, I went into the room, sat on the bed, and then I called you because I needed to hear your voice again." Michelle looked up at Dan. "I wasn't sleeping with anyone when I called you," she said. "I wanted you to know that."

Dan was relieved to hear that, too. At the time, he thought Michelle was in bed with some guy when she called him at four in the morning.

A short silence settled over them. Then Dan asked her something he'd been wondering. He wondered if Michelle would answer this question. He decided to ask.

"So what did you do?" he asked her. "As far as drugs."

"Smoked pot," Michelle said. "And I snorted a lot of cocaine, too. That's why I was so thin when you met me. It was because of the coke."

"I noticed how thin you were," Dan confessed. "But I didn't want to say anything."

"And when I kicked it, I got my figure back," Michelle said. "That's what I was addicted to, anyway. I've tried other things, though."

"Like what?" Dan asked.

"I've tried acid, but I didn't like it," Michelle said. "I had a bad trip and I freaked out so I never took it again. When I worked at that club, I used to take a lot of speed. I've also tried hash, mushrooms, and peyote. I never did smack, though," she said. "I couldn't stand the idea of sticking a needle in my arm to get high."

"When I was in the gang," Dan said. "I smoked some pot. I smoked it a few times in 'Nam. And then there was that one time with you last summer. That's the extent of my drug use." Then he laughed a little bit.

"What?" Michelle wondered. What on earth was so funny about smoking pot?

"Oh, I just remembered something," Dan said. "It happened back in 'Nam. One guy in the platoon got his hands on some of that Vietnamese marijuana and he was passing it out. This buddy of mine got some and he wanted to try it." Dan's face grew reflective, almost far away. "His name was Hayseed. That's what we called him because he came from the boondocks. Anyway," Dan continued. "He got hold of this stuff and one night me and him and Mart went off to this corner so no one would find out he had this stuff. Hayseed lights this joint and smokes it and then he turns about five shades of green before he puked up all of the ham 'n' motherfuckers he had for supper on our shoes."

"He puked up what??" Michelle asked.

"Ham 'n' motherfuckers," Dan replied. "That's what we called the ham and lima beans c-ration we'd get. Nobody liked that crap. The more polite term for it was ham 'n' chokers."

Michelle shuddered. "Sounds nauseating," she said. "Are you sure he didn't puke because of the ham and lima beans and not the joint?"

"It's hard to say," Dan replied. "Vietnamese pot isn't like the stuff here. It's much stronger."

Dan continued his story. "After that, Hayseed vowed never to touch the stuff again. He vowed that the only way he was going to get plowed was with booze. If I had a picture with me, I'd show you."

"Of your friend puking on your shoes?" Michelle asked as her eyebrows shot up. "Someone took a picture of that?"

"No," Dan said. "Of Hayseed. He was a cool guy. Give you the shirt off his back."

"Oh," Michelle said. Then she asked, "What ever happened to him?"

"He got wounded," Dan said. "About three years ago near some place called Tay Ninh. He lived for three days after it happened and then he died from his injuries."

"I'm sorry," Michelle said. Her thoughts turned briefly to Ronny Johnson, her sometimes boyfriend from high school who died in Vietnam. It was about three years since he died.

Dan said nothing. The two of them were silent for a long time after that. The silence lasted for so long, Michelle thought that Dan might have fallen asleep. She looked up at him. Dan wasn't asleep.

Michelle was struck with a sudden thought that made her laugh out loud.

"What's so funny?" Dan wondered.

"Nothing," Michelle replied. Then she laughed again.

"Come on," Dan said. "What is it?"

"Nothing," Michelle said again.

"It has to be something if it makes you laugh," Dan replied. "You sure you can't tell me?"

"Okay," Michelle said. "It's just this thing that popped into my head."

"What thing?"

"I had this mental picture of some kid coming home from baseball practice and walking into the kitchen. He says, "Hey Mom? What's for supper?" and the mom replies, 'Ham 'n' Motherfuckers'."

Dan gave her a strange look. "You have the weirdest things pop into your head, you know," he said.

"Yeah, but you love me," Michelle replied.

Dan smiled at her. "You're right," he said. "I do." He gave her a quick kiss on the lips.

* * *

**Monday, December 31, 1973**

Dan and Michelle slept in on the last day of 1973. Sleeping in for them was seven-thirty in the morning. After taking their time to wake up, they decided to take their time in the shower. Dan washed Michelle's hair for her, after she showed him how to wash her long hair without getting it all tangled up. After the shower, they had breakfast of bacon and eggs. This time, Michelle tried to make it. The scrambled eggs turned out a bit crusty.

Since Dan had New Year's Eve off, they lingered at the card table over coffee. The two of them weren't quite dressed yet. Michelle had nabbed one of Dan's shirts and she wore that and nothing else. Dan threw on a pair of jeans. "What do you want to do today?" Michelle asked. She didn't feel like being cooped up inside the cabin.

"Don't know," Dan said. "Is it still cold outside?"

"No," Michelle replied. "The guy on the radio said it was supposed to get up to thirty today."

"Above zero, right?" Dan asked. Michelle nodded. Then the phone rang. Dan got up to answer it. Michelle poured herself some coffee. When Dan came back to the table, he said, "I'm going to have to run into town."

"What for?" Michelle asked.

"That was the post office," Dan said. "There's a package there for me that's too big for the mailman to deliver. So I have to go and pick it up. You want to come along?"

"Sure," Michelle replied.

After they got dressed, Dan and Michelle went into Harrisburg. Dan stopped at the post office while Michelle waited for him in the truck. When he emerged from the old building, Dan carried a big box with him. He set the box in the bed of the truck before he slid into the driver's seat.

"Who's that from?" Michelle asked, once Dan was inside the truck.

"My uncle," Dan replied. "Remember when I called him on Christmas Day?" Michelle nodded. "I asked him to send the rest of my stuff out here. This is it."

"Oh," Michelle replied. She had forgotten about that.

"It's only ten-thirty," Dan said, looking at his watch. "What do you want to do now? It's too early for lunch."

Michelle had an idea. She got this idea from a dream she had last night. In the dream, her parents were still alive and she was coming back to the ranch from somewhere and Dan was with her. Dan wasn't working or living there in the dream. In the dream, Michelle introduced Dan to her mother and father and her parents took an immediate liking to him. A bit later in the dream, Michelle's mother pulled her aside to tell her daughter, "You're going to marry him someday. Just you wait and see."

Michelle replied, "It's a bit soon for that, Mom."

Michelle's mother said, "Mark my words, Michelle. Someday, you're going to marry him."

There was no way that Dan would ever get to meet Michelle's parents and Michelle felt that old melancholy feeling she'd get when something important happened in her life and her parents weren't around to share it with her.

But there was one way she could introduce Dan to her parents. Michelle thought it might be a bit morbid, but there was no other way she would ever get to introduce Dan to her parents.

"The cemetery," Michelle said.

"The cemetery?" Dan asked her.

"I have to show you something," she said. "It's important."

"Okay," Dan said. "But you're going to have to tell me how to get there."

Harrisburg's cemetery was on the edge of town. Residents of the tiny town and most of the county were laid to rest there. Several generations of Michelle's family were buried in that cemetery.

The road inside the cemetery was cleared of snow. Dan parked the truck and he and Michelle walked among the headstones. Michelle paused in front of one and scowled at the marker. Then she started walking before Dan caught the name on the headstone. They continued on the path. Dan paused when an American flag stuck in the snow caught his eye. He read the inscription on the marker:  _Ronald Johnson, Jr. Born February 28, 1950. Died July 17, 1970. Beloved son who gave his life in service of his country._

 _No,_ Dan thought.  _It couldn't be._

He looked up to see Michelle ahead of him. Dan went to catch up with her. They continued walking until Michelle stopped at a huge plot in the corner of the cemetery. Dan noticed that a lot of those headstones bore the last name of O'Brien.

Michelle gestured at two headstones close together. "Dan," she said. "My mom and dad."

Dan looked at the two headstones. One said " _Patrick O'Brien, born March 29, 1909, died August 16, 1958_ ". The other said, " _Kathleen Schwarz O'Brien, born June 9, 1911, died August 16, 1958_ ".

Dan looked at Michelle. "This is the only way I will ever get to introduce you to them," she explained.

"Oh," Dan replied, understanding completely. Sometimes he wondered what it would be like if he could actually have Michelle meet his parents. But he'd never get the chance to introduce her to his mother and father. Then he remembered that the last time he'd visited his parents' graves was before he went into the Army and he felt a little guilty about that. He tried to push that guilt out of his mind.

Dan noticed the headstones again. "Your mother's name was Kathleen?" he asked Michelle quietly. "That's my mom's name."

"Really?" Michelle said. "Some coincidence," she added. "Our mothers have the same first name." Then she asked, "What was your dad's name?"

"Timothy," Dan replied. "That's my middle name, too."

"My middle name is Lynn," Michelle replied.

They grew quiet. Dan stood behind Michelle and he put his arms around her. After a period of silence, Michelle spoke quietly. "Sometimes," she said. "When I come here, I think that if I talk to them right here in this spot, they can hear me." Her voice was tinged with melancholy. "Sometimes I'd come here after school, just to talk to them."

"I know how you feel," Dan replied. He tightened his arms around her. He knew exactly how she felt.

"I miss them so much," Michelle said. "They've been gone for fifteen years now. That's more than half my life."

Dan knew how she felt about this, too. There were times Dan would give anything to have at least one of his parents back. Gently, he gathered Michelle closer to him. She turned around and she buried her face in his shoulder. He stroked her hair and held her as she sobbed a little bit and he continued to do so until Michelle composed herself.

She raised her head from his shoulder. "This was a bad idea--," she began.

"No," Dan replied. "It wasn’t a bad idea. I'm kind of honored to finally meet your parents. Even if it's just like this."

Michelle smiled at him through the remnants of her tears. "I'm sure they're honored to meet you, even if it's only like this," she said. "In fact, I think they'd like you a lot."

"You think so?" Dan asked.

"I think so," Michelle replied. "Of course, my father might have taken a bit longer to warm up to you, but that's just because I was his 'little princess' and not just anyone is good enough for his Little Princess."

"You were a 'daddy's girl'?" Dan asked her.

Michelle nodded. "Yep, I was a 'daddy's girl'," she replied. "Why? Were you a 'mama's boy'?"

"Hell no," Dan said. "But sometimes she'd call me her 'little man'."

They spent a few more minutes in front of the graves and then they made their way back to the truck. This time, Michelle paused for a few seconds in front of the grave of Ronald Johnson, Jr. As they passed the headstones and one in particular belonging to someone with the last name of Brunner, Michelle's conscience spoke up again.

You know you're going to have to tell Dan about her, Michelle.

 _I will,_ Michelle thought.

When?

Soon.

* * *

 

Dan and Michelle decided to grab some takeout from Kelly's Diner in town. Dan wanted to eat in, but Michelle didn't feel like enduring stares from other people while eating. So they got their food to go. They stood at the counter while a teen-aged boy Michelle recognized as a former classmate's younger brother took their order. Dan and Michelle waited at the counter for the food.

Kelly's Diner was the only eating establishment in town. Most of the diner's regular patrons were either retirees who sat for long periods of time over coffee and either gossiped or played cribbage, or teenagers looking for a place to hang out. Michelle often times came here after school or on weekends.

"Michelle?" a voice said. Michelle and Dan turned to the speaker. The speaker was a woman who seemed to be in her early to mid twenties, but looked rather tired. She had brown hair and brown eyes and she wore a waitress's uniform and cap and her hair was up.

Michelle knew the voice. It belonged to one of her best friends from high school. "Jane?" she said.

"In the flesh," Jane replied. "Haven't seen you in ages, Michelle. I hear you're back now. How long?"

Michelle glanced at Dan. "For good," Michelle replied. "You work here?"

"Yeah," Jane replied. "I bust my ass here and then I go home and bust my ass, too. So what brings you back here?" Jane asked. Then she noticed Dan. "Oh," Jane said, knowingly, drawing the sound out and smiling at the same time. Then she said to Dan, "I'm Jane Harding, soon to be Schulz. Me and Michelle have been friends since we were little kids."

"Dan Mangan," Dan said.

"You're not from around here, are you?" Jane asked. "I mean you don't talk like you're from around here."

"No," Dan said. "I'm not from around here."

"Forgive me if I sound rude," Jane said. "But how did you end up in Bum Fuck Nowhere?" Jane missed the warning glance Michelle shot her.

"My car broke down," Dan replied. "And the Welcoming Committee was nice," he added with a look at Michelle.

"He works at the ranch," Michelle added.

One of the cooks shouted, "Order up." Jane looked over her shoulder. "That's me," she said. "Listen, Michelle. We got some catching up to do. I'm off on Wednesdays and Sundays, so if you're not doing anything, why don't you stop by?"

Michelle thought about this. Getting out of the house to visit an old friend was better than sitting in the cabin and staring at a blank TV screen. "Where do you live?" Michelle asked.

Jane looked at the floor briefly. "My mom's place," she said. "Mom watches the kids for me while I'm at work." Before Michelle could ask anything else, Jane excused herself to go back to work.

"What was that all about?" Dan wondered after Jane was out of earshot.

"Oh, that's just Jane," Michelle replied. "She's not so bad, once you get to know her. Sometime, we'll have to go visit her."

They continued to wait for their food. As they sat at the counter, a voice could be heard from a nearby booth.

"That's her," the voice said. The voice was kind of shrill and belonged to a woman. Emmaline said she was back."

The other speaker, the woman's companion, couldn't be heard above the din of the busy diner. But the first speaker continued talking. "I hear she's living in sin with the help," the shrill woman said. "Can you believe that? She's living with the help!"

After the second speaker said something in reply, the shrill woman said, "Yes, that's so shameful. Sharing a bed and not being married. Her mother and father are probably spinning in their graves right about now."

Michelle heard every word of this. Dan heard it, too. Michelle's face grew red as she was embarrassed by the fact that Dan had to listen to that. She couldn't bring herself to look at Dan.

The shrill woman continued. "She used to live in California, you know. I saw  _Valley of the Dolls._  I know what kinds of things they do out there. And then all those hippies live out there, too. We all know what they do."

Michelle felt the anger welling up. This shrill harpy knew nothing about what it was like out there. She knew nothing of what Michelle had gone through in the past few months, no, the last few years.

Another feeling welled up inside Michelle. It was an urge. It was an old, familiar urge, one that happened when the feelings got to be too much. This urge was the need to make one's self numb, to numb one's senses from these overwhelming feelings.

Michelle wanted a drink. She wanted a drink to numb the anger, to make that urge go away. Her heart started racing.

"I hear he puts in a lot of overtime just to keep her supplied with drugs," the shrill woman said. "You know she does that, too. Her brother says she's one of those hippie acid freaks."

 _Did,_ Michelle thought angrily.  _Did drugs. I don't do them anymore._

Dan laid a reassuring hand on Michelle's shoulder. Michelle still couldn't bring herself to look at him.

"Do you remember that one time about four years ago at Midnight Mass?" the shrill woman asked. The other speaker said something and then shrill woman continued, "She showed up in the most shamefully obscene dress I've ever seen in my life." Pause. "It barely covered her bottom and it was crocheted. Crocheted!" Pause. "And she was stoned, too. But that's not the worst of it." Pause. "She started flirting with Paul Wilcox. Right in front of his wife, too! And during the sermon! Isn't that outrageous?" Another pause. "But that's not as bad as what she did at her grandmother's funeral."

Michelle had enough. While the urge to numb herself was strong, her growing anger was stronger. Michelle got up from the counter and she walked over to the booth where the shrill woman and her friend were sitting over coffee.

"Excuse me," Michelle snapped at the woman. Both women looked up at Michelle in surprise. "But I couldn't help but overhear what you were saying." Michelle let her voice drip with sarcasm. "Nobody could help but overhear what you were saying," she added. "Since your harpy, shrill voice seems to carry all the way to goddamn Cheyenne."

The shrill woman stared at Michelle. Michelle recognized the woman as Bernadine Anderson, Pete Anderson's mother.

"What I do is nobody's business but mine," Michelle said coldly. "Where I live, who I live with, and how I spend my damn time. You know nothing about me. You just assume you know everything about me. So instead of shooting your mouth off, why don't you keep your trap shut and mind your own fucking business?"

Bernadine opened her mouth to give a suitable retort, but the only thing she could say was, "You're nothing but trash, Shelly O'Brien. You always have been and you always will be."

Michelle laughed a hollow, bitter laugh. "So that's your answer, huh? That's your answer to everything, isn't it? There's an old saying, you know, about how people living in glass houses really shouldn't be throwing stones." Michelle leaned over, placing her hands on the table and she got in the other woman's face. "You're nothing but a hypocrite, a holier than thou, sanctimonious hypocrite." Bernadine's eyes grew wide.

The diner grew quiet. Shelly O'Brien never did this before. Shelly O'Brien just looked miserable and slunk out of the place when the gossip got to be too much.

"Mind your own fucking business and stay out of mine," Michelle snapped at the woman. Michelle straightened up and she stalked out of the diner and to the parking lot.

The regular diner noise resumed. Dan wanted to go out to the parking lot, but the food hadn't come yet. He shook his head at the scene he just witnessed. He looked out the window and saw Michelle pacing near the truck.

As he heard the woman in the booth talk about Michelle, Dan felt his own anger bubbling up inside him. But he now realized that Michelle hadn't been exaggerating about the people in this town. First it was Pete, and now this woman in the diner. Why couldn't they see that Michelle was trying to change? Why wouldn't they give her a chance?

The food arrived and Dan paid the teenager at the counter and he took the bag and went to the truck. Michelle was sitting inside now.

"Are you all right?" he asked her.

"I think so," Michelle replied. He noticed that she was shaking a bit. Michelle looked up at him. "I want a drink so bad right now," she said.

Dan drew her close to him and held her for a few minutes until Michelle's urge to drink passed. She said to him, "Maybe we should go home before the food gets cold."

* * *

After lunch, Dan took out a pocket knife and opened the box. Tucked in the top was a letter from his uncle. First, Dan pulled some smaller boxes out of this box and he frowned. Then he pulled out a small photo album. He handed this to Michelle, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor next to him.

"Now you can see what I looked like when I was a kid," he told her.

Michelle flipped open the book and looked among the black and white and color pictures of a dark haired little boy, his mother and his father. As she looked through the pictures, the little boy got bigger. But then the father was missing. From then on, the pictures were of the boy and his mother. As the boy continued to grow, the mother began to look different. She looked thinner, tired, and not well. And then she was gone from the album, too.

Dan watched her as Michelle looked at the photographs. At one point, she looked up at him and smiled and said, "You were a cute kid, you know."

Dan smiled at her. "And you look just like your dad, too," Michelle remarked.

Michelle continued to look at the photo album. There were a few pictures of Dan wearing a black leather jacket and trying to look tough. Michelle could see the fear underneath the façade. In another photo from his gang days, the tough look turned into a somewhat hard look, the look of someone who had seen things he shouldn't have seen or done things he shouldn't have done.

But then in the next bunch of pictures, the black jacket was replaced with a red one. Dan was with a group of kids who also wore identical red jackets. "Is this your club?" Michelle asked him.

"Yep," Dan said.

Michelle recognized Dan, who was goofing off in the photo with another boy who had blonde hair fashioned into a crew cut. Michelle saw another girl that looked familiar to her. She pointed at the person and looked up at Dan. "That's Di Lynch," he said. Michelle remembered that name from last fall in New York when she went there to give Barry the keys to her place and saw her former life for what it really was. Di Lynch was backstage, stoned, and went off with the singer.

Michelle pointed at the blonde boy. "That's Mart," Dan said quietly.

She saw the other people in the picture. She saw a girl with curly blonde hair standing next to another girl with light brown hair that went to her shoulders. "Trixie and Honey," Dan explained when Michelle looked up at him. "Trixie is Mart's sister and Honey is Honey Wheeler. Her father owned the game preserve I worked in."

Then Michelle saw two boys. One had wavy dark hair, the other had red hair. "The dark haired one is Brian Belden," Dan said. "And the other guy is Jim Frayne. He's the adopted brother of Honey." Dan said nothing after that. He turned away. Dan couldn't look at that picture anymore. It reminded him of another place, another lifetime, one that he wouldn't have left if a certain letter hadn't come to his house. It was another place he'd never get to go back to again.

Michelle saw the caption on the back of the picture.  _The BWG's; June 1966._

Michelle was fascinated by this picture. It was just a group of kids wearing the same jackets. But they were friends and they all looked like good kids. It reminded her that Dan had been lucky enough at a young enough age to get a second chance and that he had people around him who believed in him. Michelle had friends in high school, but they were the "bad kids" who hung out at Cancer Corner to smoke or ditched school to drink. They were the kids who didn't have it so great, who did things to numb themselves from the boredom of living in a place like Harrisburg and from the reality that their lives were nothing like the lives of those families seen on TV. They were the kids who vowed they were going to leave Harrisburg for bigger and better things and they were never coming back. But they didn't escape. Most of them were still here. Michelle escaped for a few years, and she only thought that life on the outside was bigger and better. Now she was back. Ronny Johnson escaped Harrisburg, only to return inside a flag-draped coffin.

"What does BWG mean?" Michelle asked.

"Bob-Whites of the Glen," Dan replied quietly. "That was the name of our club."

Michelle continued to go through the photo album. In a few of the pictures, Dan was with a girl who had long blonde hair. Michelle asked who she was. "An old girlfriend of mine," Dan said. He wouldn’t say anything else. Instead, he got up and he excused himself. He went outside for a bit.

Michelle closed the photo album and started going through the box. She had to because the box held those things that were a part of Dan's life. Through these pictures, she was learning things about this man she had fallen in love with.

Michelle pulled out a large picture frame surrounding black velvet. Mounted on the black velvet were patches and medals from Dan's service in the Army. One patch looked like a berry or a red pepper and it had a bolt of lightening on it. Another patch had a rifle in a box with a wreath around the box and two stars. There were four medals. One had a green and white ribbon. Hanging from the ribbon was a bronze hexagon, point up, that had an eagle with wings spread. Michelle lifted the medal up. On the back was a sprig of laurel and the words "For Military" and "Merit" rested above the sprig.

The second medal had a dark red ribbon with smaller, white stripes on it. From that ribbon hung a bronze circle. On the circle was an eagle standing on a closed book and a sword. The words "Efficiency", "Honor", and "Fidelity" circled the eagle. When Michelle lifted that medal to inspect the back, she saw a five pointed star and a scroll resting between the words "For Good" and "Conduct". All of this was surrounded by two branches; laurel on the left and oak on the right.

The third medal looked a bit more ornate. This medal was gold colored. The ribbon was red with yellow stripes. The medal was round, but not one disc with a picture. The medal consisted of a wreath. Lying upon the wreath were two scimitars that were crossed saltirewise. Lying upon the swords was a Maltese cross. In the center of the cross was an outline of the country of Vietnam that was flanked by two palm sprigs. Underneath this was a scroll that bore words in Vietnamese:  _Quoc-Gia Lao-Tuong._ Michelle did not know what that meant.

The fourth medal's ribbon had yellow, green, and red stripes. The actual medal was bronze and circular shaped. On the front, it bore an oriental-style dragon behind a grove of bamboo trees. The inscription on the medal read, "Republic of Vietnam Service". The reverse side bore a crossbow surmounted by a torch. The inscription read, "United States of America".

Michelle set the framed display aside. She found a tin box and opened that to find that the box held some photographs. The pictures were from Vietnam. There were pictures of tents, of bunkers, one of a tank, a few from what appeared to be a USO show, and some of other soldiers. Michelle leafed through these, reading the inscriptions written on the back in Dan's handwriting.

At the bottom of the tin, rested the last picture. It was a picture of three soldiers standing together in front of a large tent. One of them was shirtless and wearing sunglasses. Michelle recognized that soldier as Dan. In the middle stood a blonde man she recognized from the picture of Dan's old friends in the photo album. The blonde man was Mart Belden. This picture was obviously taken before Mart Belden lost his legs.

Michelle's eyes drifted to the third soldier and when she saw the brown haired, hazel eyed man, the color drained from her face and her heart began to pound.

 _It couldn't be,_ she thought.  _It couldn't be him._

Michelle turned the picture over. On the back, Dan had written,  _Me (Tin Man), Mart (Shakespeare), and Ronny Johnson (Hayseed), 25 th/4th Battalion/9th Infantry Bravo Company, April, 1970, Fire Support Base Delta, Tay Ninh._

It was. That was none other than Ronny Johnson in that picture, the man Dan referred to the other night as Hayseed. This was the same Ronny Johnson Michelle knew. This was the same Ronny Johnson who called her by the nickname of "Mick", who ditched school with her and snuck bottles of expensive liquor from his father's endless supply and they'd drink from them down at the lake. This was the same Ronny Johnson who was Michelle's on again, off again boyfriend in high school and one of her confidantes.

Dan knew Ronny. Dan saw Ronny before he died. Michelle got up and went into the bedroom, through one of the boxes that contained her things. Michelle saved every letter that Ronny Johnson wrote to her from the war. She found a bundle of papers, tied together with a piece of yarn and she brought the bundle back into the other room. Michelle sat down on the floor and she untied the string. She pulled out the letters, one by one, and read through them. Ronny always talked about being homesick and about his buddies. Michelle was looking for any reference to Dan she could find in these old letters.

* * *

 

Dan walked out the cabin door and wandered over to the barns. There was a place he knew where people kept their stashes. It was in the corner of the barn, under a floorboard. Dan found the place and he pried up the floorboard. Inside the hollowed out hole was a pack of cigarettes, a bag of pot, someone's porn stash, and a bottle of whiskey. Dan went for the whiskey first, but then he thought better of it. Suppose Michelle smelled it on him when he went back into the cabin? Dan went for the cigarettes instead. He tapped one out of the pack and he fished inside his coat pocket for the book of matches. He struck the match against the back of the book and he cupped his hands around the tiny flame, bringing it up to the cigarette that hung from the end of his mouth. Once lit, Dan inhaled the smoke, coughed a bit, and then exhaled.

Having his uncle send that box was a bad idea. Dan thought that Bill would have sent out the old pictures of him, his mother, and his father instead of sending out pictures of the Bob-Whites and things from Dan's time in the war. Dan couldn't look at those. Seeing that picture of the Bob-Whites brought to mind that bad dream Dan had on Christmas night. He couldn't look at Mart in that picture. Mart was standing up on his own legs, legs he later lost because Dan didn't stop it from happening. The guilt was too much to bear. Every time he saw Di in that picture, her words from that summer picnic nearly two years ago screamed in his brain. Baby killer. And when he looked at Jim Frayne, he couldn't help but think about Jim getting into the Guard to avoid getting drafted and that Matt Wheeler pulled some strings to do this. And when Dan thought about this, the resentment within him grew. Perfect Jim Frayne. Honorable Jim Frayne. Jim Frayne who could do no wrong. Jim Frayne had the rich adopted parents and got to go to college and got what he wanted in life.

Dan remembered the time when International Pine wanted to buy some land in the game preserve. Some of the land was Matt Wheeler's land. Some of the land belonged to Mr. Maypenny. Jim sided with his father on that issue under the noble reason of bringing jobs to Sleepyside. Dan laughed to himself bitterly. Other people's jobs were more important than the fact that this proposal from the furniture factory threatened the first stable home that Dan had in a couple of years. Progress was more important than your friend having a place to live. Fattening up the old trust fund and making money for your old man meant more than someone whom you professed to be your friend having some stability in their life. Matthew Wheeler was a major stockholder in International Pine.

Or maybe this was just Jim's way of getting even with Dan for all those times Trixie went running to Dan for sympathy after she and Jim had an argument. It wasn't like Dan encouraged this behavior. In fact, he tried to discourage it and tried to get Trixie to talk to Di or someone else about this instead of him. Jane Morgan had a big problem with this and so did Marianne.

Dan finished the cigarette, but it didn't help to banish the dark thoughts. He decided to go for the whiskey anyway. Dan took the bottle, unscrewed the cap, and drank from it. The liquor burned the back of his throat at first, but then after a few drinks, he started to feel warm inside and a bit more relaxed.

Dan limited himself to a few swallows of the liquor. It wouldn't be good for him to have Michelle smell it on him, especially when earlier in the day she had the urge to have some herself. Carefully, he put the bottle back into the hollowed out hole. As he was replacing the floorboard, he heard an all-too familiar and unwelcome voice.

"Keep your hands off my girlie mag," Pete Anderson said.

Dan stood up straight. "I wasn't touching your damn porno, Anderson," Dan retorted.

Pete laughed. "Oh, that's right," he said sarcastically. "I forgot. You don't need skin mags. You got a slut of your very own."

Take some dark thoughts, a bit of liquor, and a general dislike of Pete Anderson, let it sit over simmering anger, and stir occasionally. Add a pinch of bitterness to taste. Dan felt the heat of rage flame up within him. He grabbed Pete by the shirt front and looked the other man right in the eye. Dan's jaw was clenched tight. "You're damned lucky I don't clean your fucking clock right here," Dan snapped at Pete. Dan shoved Pete hard. "Now get out of my face, asshole," he snarled. Pete stared at Dan and then took off.

Dan took several deep breaths to make himself calm down. This wasn't the first time the searing heat of rage took over him. It had happened several times since Dan came home from the war. One time, before he left to come out West, one of those rages landed Dan in jail for the night.

The winter sun was sinking over the horizon. Dan decided to go back into the cabin. He wouldn't look at the pictures unless he had to. Maybe Michelle was finished looking at them.

When he returned, Michelle was still sitting on the floor, holding a photograph in one hand and a piece of paper in the other. She looked up at Dan when he opened the door, and Dan saw that she had been crying.

"What's wrong?" Dan asked. He wondered what on earth was in his things that would make Michelle cry.

"You knew him," she said.

"Knew who?" he asked as he hung up his coat. He went over to sit on the floor next to Michelle.

"Ronny Johnson," Michelle replied. "You knew him."

Dan was confused. "I knew a guy named Ronny Johnson. He was in my unit. He's the guy we called Hayseed." Was Michelle suggesting that she knew him, too? He remembered her once saying that she had a friend who served and was killed. Dan saw that headstone at the cemetery earlier today and wondered if it might be him. The date of death was right. But Ronald Johnson was a fairly common name.

"We used to write each other," Michelle said. "Ronny used to write to me about being homesick and about his buddies. He had two of them. He always referred to them by their nicknames, Shakespeare and Tin Man."

Dan's blood chilled when he heard the nicknames. Michelle went on. "He said that Shakespeare liked to use a lot of big words and he knew a lot of quotes from Shakespeare stuff. And he said that Tin Man always had nurses or Donut Dollies checking him out." Then she laughed. "Ronny used to say that he didn't stand much of a chance around the girls if Tin Man was around because they were always looking at him." She held out a photograph to him. "I saw this picture," Michelle said. Then she laughed. "I knew who you were right away," she said. "I recognized Mart from the other picture. And when I saw the third guy, I knew it was Ronny. Then I read the back of the picture."

"How did you know him?" Dan asked. Dan never remembered the name of the town Ronny said he was from. He knew that Ronny was from Nebraska, but for all Dan knew that meant Omaha or Lincoln or Kearney or one of those little no-name towns that dotted Interstate 80.

"I hung out with him," Michelle replied. "We hung out with the same group of kids. Me and Ronny ditched school together. Sometimes we'd sort of go steady. He wanted to get out of this place as badly as I did."

"Sort of go steady?" Dan wondered.

"Ronny had wandering eyes," Michelle said. "But then again, at the time, I did, too. It was some sort of understanding we had, I guess. I only found out he got his draft notice because he was living in Denver with his uncle and he had an apprenticeship with the Steamfitters Union. I decided to stop and see him when I was coming back from Woodstock. I didn't want him to go."

"Because you were against the war?" Dan asked.

"Because I didn't want him to die," Michelle replied. "But he did." She looked down briefly and when she raised her head, Dan saw fresh tears there. "About a week before we graduated from high school, I was 'late', if you know what I mean."

Dan nodded. Michelle continued. "I was 'with' Ronny a lot around that time. But it turned out to be a false alarm," she said. "For the longest time, I used to wish it hadn't been, because if it hadn't, Ronny would have married me and when his number came up, he could have gotten out of going because he had a kid to support."

"The paternity deferment," Dan said. "And if he didn't go, he wouldn't have died," he finished for her.

Michelle nodded. "It's stupid, I know, but I used to think that a lot."

"You don't think about that anymore, do you?" Dan asked carefully.

"No," Michelle replied. "I haven't thought about that in a couple of years. If it had happened, I doubt it would have lasted, anyway. We could never stay together for long periods of time. We were better as friends than anything else. Getting married would have ruined it."

Michelle gestured to the stack of papers sitting next to her. "I still have all the letters he wrote me, though," she said. "I had to go through them to see what he said about you." She grinned at Dan.

"Nothing bad, I hope," Dan replied.

"No," Michelle replied. "He said that you were very cool and that you were very loyal and that you'd give the shirt off your back to him if he needed it, even if you needed it more than he did. He also said, and I quote, 'He's a damned good soldier, too'."

Then Michelle sobered. "When he was injured, and he was in the hospital, did he say anything?"

Dan replied, "He kept saying that he wasn't going to make it. Of course, I told him he was full of it and that he was going to make it. He said, no, it was his time and he knew it."

"He didn't suffer, did he?" Michelle asked.

Dan didn't know how to put this. Hayseed was in a lot of pain and he was weak and he lost a lot of blood. Dan thought it might have been more merciful for Hayseed if he'd died instantly. But then Dan wouldn't have had the chance to say goodbye. "He wasn't in good shape, Michelle," Dan told her. "He died because he started bleeding again and the doctors couldn’t stop it. But he died in his sleep."

"What happened when he got wounded?" Michelle asked.

"I wasn't there when it happened. Hayseed and a couple of other guys were ambushed by some Viet Cong who tried to sneak attack our base. They were pulling guard duty. I was with the soldiers who were defending the base. I heard later that one guy died instantly, but Ronny and the other guy, who were wounded, still held their ground. That's how he was. He was a decent guy, but a stubborn son of a bitch," Dan said. "He wasn't going down without a fight."

"That sounds like Ronny," Michelle said. Then she added softly, "Thank you. I never knew what happened."

"Nobody told you?" Dan asked.

Michelle shook her head. "Mary called me when it got around town that he died. I didn't come back for the funeral, either. I was too drunk to come back for it. When I heard the news, I went on a four day bender."

Michelle changed the subject a bit. "So how did you get the name Tin Man?" she asked Dan.

"It was a joke," he said. "Because I was handy with an axe and the Tin Man carried an axe." Then Dan's face clouded over a bit. "But the Tin Man also had no heart. And that's why I was this 'damned good soldier'. You have no heart, you can't feel anything."

"You have a heart," Michelle replied softly. She leaned over and gave Dan a kiss on the cheek. "You do have a heart."

* * *

A sense of melancholy settled over the cabin. The pictures and the old mementos were put away. Supper consisted of the last of the TV dinners in the freezer.

Desperate to shake the gloomy feeling, Dan suggested something to Michelle. "Let's go outside."

"But it's cold out," she said.

"It's warmer out now than it's been the past few days," Dan pointed out. He grabbed his coat from the hook and waited for Michelle to do the same. She got up and grabbed her coat and then the two of them went outside.

Winter nights are silent. Unlike summertime, when the crickets and the frogs come out for their nightly concert, winter is wrapped in a blanket of snow that silences the song. There is a certain calm in the silence, a certain sense of peace, though.

Dan took Michelle by her gloved hand and led her out beyond the barns, past the dusk to dawn light and until he could only see her as an inky black shape. He stopped and he put his arm around her shoulders. Then he looked up at the night sky. Michelle did the same.

It was clear out that night and the stars were plainly visible. The night sky was a black blanket and the stars were its decoration.

The old year was dying and soon, the new year would begin. The young couple stood there, watching the stars, and having similar thoughts.

The past year had been tumultuous for both of them. Both of them ended up in this place about halfway through the year, searching for a peace they both needed to have. He left his home to find this, but she came back to the last place she expected to find it.

They wondered what they would be doing right now if that hadn't happened. Dan wondered what he'd be doing if he had made to California after all or if he hadn't left home in the first place. Michelle let herself wonder what she'd be doing if she hadn't come back here last summer. Then she realized if things had turned out differently, she might not even be here at all.

There was no use in speculation because the conclusions they came to were not their reality. Their reality was much better than any what if. They started the year out with nothing and ended it with each other. Therefore, they both reasoned to themselves, the next year would be even better. And the year after that, too. It could only get better from here on.

After awhile, Dan led Michelle back to the cabin, but he didn't go inside. Instead, he sat down on the wooden step, just like they did last summer. Michelle sat next to him. Dan reached into his pocket and he pulled out a transistor radio. He turned the unit on and fiddled with the dial until he found a station that came in clearly. They were doing a countdown of the most popular songs of the past year. Dan got up, walked over to the window, and set the radio on the window ledge as the music wafted gently through the winter night. Then he sat back down.

"Are you happy?" he asked her. "I mean I know today kind of sucked, but are you happy?"

"Yes," Michelle replied. "I'm happy. I'm happier than I've been in a long time, even in spite of what happened today." It was an honest answer. It was the truth, because when she thought about it, Michelle was happy, today notwithstanding.

"Good," Dan replied. "All I want is for you to be happy, Michelle." He leaned over and he kissed her softly.

The radio started playing a Carpenters' song, so naturally, Dan got up and changed the station. Michelle laughed when he did this, she couldn't help herself. Dan found a station that wasn't doing a year end countdown. Instead they were playing an Elvis Presley song.

Dan held out his gloved hand in invitation. "Dance with me," he said to Michelle.

"Out here?" Michelle replied. "You're nuts!"

"I'm nuts?" Dan replied in a teasing way. "This is coming from someone who stands outside in the middle of a thunderstorm." It was a kooky idea, given that it was close to midnight, they were outside, and it was the dead of winter. But Dan wanted to feel free of the melancholy that permeated throughout the day.

"Touché," Michelle admitted with a grin. She got up from the steps and went over to Dan. He stood in a patch of light that was cast from the inside of the cabin.

Michelle took his left hand into her right hand and she looped her left arm around his neck. Dan put his arm around Michelle's waist and gently pulled her close to him, resting his cheek in her hair. They began to sway slowly as Elvis sang the words they knew to be true.

_Like a river flows surely to the sea_   
_Darling so it goes_   
_Some things are meant to be_   
_Take my hand, take my whole life, too._   
_For I can't help falling in love with you._

 

They danced together in the faint lamplight, leaving their footprints in the snow. As the song drew to its close, Dan stopped moving. He brought his hands up to frame Michelle's face between them. "I love you so much, baby," he told her softly, as he looked deep into her eyes. "I don't know what I'd do without you."

"I love you, too," Michelle replied in the same soft voice.

Dan tilted her head up, and then tilted his head down to kiss her. It was a long kiss, a slow kiss, a romantic kiss, a kiss that expressed the love they felt for each other. The kiss broke just as the DJ broke out  _Auld Lang Syne_. Dan smiled at Michelle before he kissed her once again.

They had each other and they thought that was all they needed. Nothing else mattered and nobody else mattered. They had the love of the other and with that they knew they could get through anything.

1974 looked to be a very good year, indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Information about the various service medals and the patches Dan had were found at About.Com and The US Army in the Vietnam War. Dan served in the 25th Infantry, which was known as "Tropical Lightening" at the time. The fire support base he served at, however, is fictitious. Dan was in the 25th Infantry because they were one of the last divisions in Vietnam.
> 
> The Army is full of colorful phrases, isn't it? The term ham 'n' motherfuckers was something I found at this site, Vietnam Veteran's Terminology ( http://www.vietvet.org/glossary.htm ). I was actually looking for something else and I ran across that one. And of course, me being me, it ended up in this story.
> 
> The song quoted in this chapter is Can't Help Falling In Love by Elvis Presley, which remains from the original version of this story.
> 
> Thanks to my hubby for coming up with Dan's Army nickname. :) I could not think of one for him for the life of me, and Hubby came to my rescue.
> 
> The paternity deferrment mentioned in this chapter was one reason someone could be found unqualified for the draft. What this meant was that a man had to have children and his being in the service would cause undue hardship on his children. I know about the paternity deferment because when my grandfather was up for the draft during World War 2, they found him unqualified to serve because he had children and his being in the service would cause hardship on his family.
> 
> "That Crowley Stuff" is a reference to Alistair Crowley who was some sort of mystic. Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin was into him and he even bought Crowley's mansion back in the 70's. Ozzy Osbourne did a song about him, too. I can't really explain much about Mr. Crowley.


End file.
